Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.
Iran dismissed as “irresponsible and provocative” accusations from regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia that it was responsible for a weekend missile attack on Riyadh launched from war-ravaged Yemen.
An Iranian foreign ministry statement quoted its spokesman Bahram Ghassemi as saying the accusations by the Saudi-led coalition were “unjust, irresponsible, destructive and provocative.”
Saudi forces intercepted and destroyed the ballistic missile launched on Saturday from Yemen, where the kingdom leads a coalition in support of the recognized government against Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels.
— AFP
A Saudi-owned television station says King Salman has met with Lebanon’s outgoing prime minister, who abruptly resigned during his trip to the kingdom.
Al-Arabiya TV says the king received Saad Hariri this afternoon.
Hariri’s resignation in a televised statement from Saudi Arabia on Saturday has stunned Lebanon and plunged tiny nation into uncertainty. In his resignation, Hariri accused Shiite power Iran of meddling in Arab affairs and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant Hezbollah group of holding Lebanon hostage.
The resignation threw Lebanon’s fragile government into disarray. President Michel Aoun said he wouldn’t consider the resignation until it’s delivered to him in person.
It’s uncertain when Hariri will return to Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah speculated on Sunday that Saudi Arabia had forced Hariri to resign amid the deepening Saudi-Iran rivalry.
— AP
French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo says it is pressing charges after receiving fresh death threats over a cartoon of the Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan who faces rape allegations.
The provocative magazine, which suffered a deadly jihadist attack in 2015 after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, depicted Ramadan with a huge erection in its edition last Wednesday, saying: “I am the sixth pillar of Islam.”
The Swiss academic, an Oxford professor and conservative Islamic intellectual in France, has been accused of rape by two women after the Harvey Weinstein scandal unleashed a wave of sexual abuse accusations worldwide. Ramadan has furiously denied the accusations as a “campaign of lies launched by my adversaries.”
Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau, the magazine’s editor, says the threats and hate mail had “never really stopped” after the January 2015 jihadist attack in which 12 people were gunned down at its offices.
“Sometimes there are peaks when we receive explicit death threats on social media — this has been the case once again,” he tells Europe 1 radio. “It’s always difficult to know if these are serious threats or not, but as a principle, we take them seriously and press charges.”
— AFP
The Palestinian challenge about how FIFA handled its complaint against the Israeli soccer federation will be heard at the Court of Arbitration for Sport this month.
CAS says its panel will hear the Palestine Football Association’s appeal on Nov. 27. A verdict is expected weeks later.
The court date was announced 10 days after FIFA President Gianni Infantino said his organization would not intervene after years of attempted mediation between its two member federations.
The Palestinians’ appeal to CAS followed Infantino steering the soccer body’s annual congress in May to delay debate on a FIFA-appointed task force’s report. It could have stopped West Bank settlement clubs from playing in the Israeli league.
FIFA rules prohibit federations from holding games on another member’s territory without permission.
— AP
Catalonia’s sacked separatist leader Carles Puigdemont and four former ministers are due to appear November 17 in a Belgian court which is hearing Spain’s case for their extradition, according to a judicial source.
The source tells AFP the five would appear at 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) on November 17 in a Brussels court, their first hearing since the Belgian authorities freed them on bail Sunday night.
A Brussels judge released Puigdemont and four close separatist allies on the condition they stay in Belgium and attend court sessions.
The five fled to Belgium after Spanish authorities fired them on October 28 for seeking secession for Catalonia. Nine other deposed cabinet members in the same rebellion case were sent to jail in Madrid, eight of them without bail, while the judge’s investigation continues.
— Agencies
The time for “strategic patience” with North Korea is over, US President Donald Trump warns, after winning Japan’s backing for his policy of considering all options to rein in the rogue state.
Trump describes the North’s nuclear program as “a threat to the civilized world and international peace and stability” on the second day of an Asian tour dominated by the crisis.
The president has signaled in the past that Washington could look beyond a diplomatic solution to the North’s nuclear weapons ambitions and consider military intervention.
“The era of strategic patience is over,” he declared alongside his host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
— AFP
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid casts the detention of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close associates as a “step up” in the submarines corruption probes.
Speaking ahead of his weekly faction meeting, Lapid says he predicted these events, adding that Netanyahu will be questioned in the affair next.
“There is no scenario, no situation in which Prime Minister Netanyahu is not summoned for questioning in the submarines affair,” he says.
Netanyahu is not a suspect in the affair, dubbed Case 3000, but is widely expected to give police testimony.
Lapid links the submarines affair to a bill approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday to restrict police recommendations for indictment.
The bill is designed to protect Netanyahu and is being spearheaded by the prime minister, he charges.
What happened in the ministerial meeting yesterday was “criminal behavior,” he alleges.
— Marissa Newman
Larry David is facing criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and others for joking about dating in concentration camps during his monologue while hosting “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend.
David, who is Jewish, noted that disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who is at the center of the sexual harassment firestorm gripping Hollywood, is also Jewish before going into jokes about pickup lines in concentration camps.
The jokes were met with groans and awkward chuckles from the audience.
Social media was quick to criticize the HBO star. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that David “managed to be offensive, insensitive & unfunny all at same time. Quite a feat.”
Representatives for David didn’t immediately return a request for comment Monday.
— AP
Saudi King Salman swears in new officials to take over from a powerful prince and former minister believed to be detained in a large-scale sweep.
The official Saudi Press Agency released images Monday of the swearing-in of new National Guard chief Prince Khalid bin Ayyaf al-Muqrin and new Economy and Planning Minister Mohammad al-Tuwaijri.
Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, who for years had led the National Guard, and Adel Fakeih, who had led the Economy Ministry, were both reportedly arrested as part of a purported anti-corruption probe led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The arrests began late Saturday. Eleven princes and 38 officials and businessmen are reportedly being held at five-star hotels across the capital, Riyadh.
— AP
Labor party chairman Avi Gabbay dismisses criticism by the coalition Yisrael Beytenu and Kulanu parties, after their respective leaders rule out sitting in a future government under his leadership.
He says the comments by Avigdor Liberman and Moshe Kahlon, on the contrary, “very much encourage us,” as it signals the lawmakers are panicking by his climb in the opinion polls.
Gabbay, speaking at the weekly Zionist Union faction meeting, says “everyone will stand in line to join the coalition” when he wins the next election.
— Marissa Newman
Egypt’s antiquities ministry says archaeologists have discovered remnants of an ancient gymnasium dating back about 2,300 years, from the Hellenistic period. The discovery was made by a German-Egyptian mission at the site of Watfa in Fayoum province, about 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, southwest of the capital, Cairo.
Watfa is the site of the ancient village of Philoteris, founded by King Ptolemy II in the 3rd century BC.
Ayman Ashmawi of the ministry says the gymnasium consists of a large meeting hall, once adorned with statues, a dining hall, a courtyard and a nearly 200-meter-long racetrack.
Cornelia Roemer, head of the mission, says the discovery clearly shows the impact of Greek life in Egypt, not only in Alexandria, but also in the countryside.
— AP
Two novels about the Nazis took France’s biggest literary prizes, with Eric Vuillard’s story of how German industry and finance backed Adolf Hitler winning the top Prix Goncourt.
“L’ordre du jour” (in English “Agenda”) had been among the favorites for the Goncourt prize — the most prestigious in the French-speaking world.
Vuillard, 49, says he was taken aback on hearing he won for his elegant, 160-page book which charts how the financial support of German industrialists was crucial to Hitler’s rise.
“One is always surprised, sometimes fatally,” he tells reporters at the Paris restaurant where the winner was announced.
Asked whether the book was a warning for our own populist times, the writer says he wanted to set out how the “elites and industrialists slid into a situation where they compromised themselves.”
The Renaudot award, which is often seen as a consolation prize for those not shortlisted for the Goncourt, went to “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele” about the secret post-Holocaust life of the Nazi war criminal.
— AFP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is confronted at the Likud faction meeting by bereaved relatives of Israelis killed in terror attacks on West Bank roads, who demand more funding for bypass highways to avoid Palestinian areas and improved infrastructure.
“For 20 minutes, I waited in the area,” said Hadas Mizrahi, referring to the internet failure on the road after her husband was killed in a 2014 drive-by shooting near Hebron.
Also directly addressing the prime minister was Adva Bitton, whose daughter Adele was badly injured and later died of her injures after their car was stoned on a West Bank road and consequently crashed.
Netanyahu says he just earmarked NIS 200 million to complete the bypass roads in Qalandiya and Beit Aryeh, after meeting with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon.
He says an additional NIS 600 million will be added to the 2019 budget, for additional routes and lighting.
But the prime minister stresses that he must “lay the groundwork” for international opinion before taking action.
“For a year we haven’t had any condemnation,” says Netanyahu of building in the West Bank. “This is not a coincidence, this is a result of listening to public opinion.”
He says the government has a “clear commitment” to resolve the issue of security on West Bank roads, but says “we aren’t talking, we’re doing.”
The terror victims’ relatives and settler leaders were holding a hunger strike outside Netanyahu’s house to demand immediate allocation of the funding.
— Marissa Newman
A brigadier general, suspected of hoarding military equipment in violation of army rules, steps down from his position, taking “full responsibility” for his misdeeds, the army says.
Earlier today, Brig Gen. Mordechai Kahane, the IDF’s chief combat intelligence officer and head of the army’s Border Defense Force, met with IDF Chief Gadi Eisenkot to discuss the charges against him.
“The officer took full responsibility,” the army says. “During the conversation, the officer asked that the chief of staff allow him to end his position and move toward leaving the IDF — and the chief of staff accepted the request.”
Last month, Kahane was suspended over the allegations that he had been improperly amassing and keeping military equipment, including weapons taken from terrorists.
— Judah Ari Gross
Israeli navy sailors shoot and lightly injure two Gazans who did not heed calls to stop after they left the Strip’s designated fishing zone, the army says.
After the boat traveled outside the permitted area, the soldiers called for it to halt and fired shots into the area before taking aim at the boat itself, according to an IDF statement.
The Palestinians were taken into custody and their boat was impounded, the army says.
— Judah Ari Gross
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir warns Tehran the kingdom would not tolerate “any infringement” on its national security, following a weekend missile attack on Riyadh by Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.
“Iranian interventions in the region are detrimental to the security of neighboring countries and affect international peace and security. We will not allow any infringement on our national security,” Jubeir tweets.
— AFP
Former US secretary of state John Kerry warns Congress that it would be “extraordinarily dangerous” for it to reject the Iran nuclear deal that he helped broker.
US President Donald Trump last month decertified Iran’s compliance with the 2015 agreement, but stopped short of scrapping the deal outright, instead handing the issue over to Congress.
Kerry tells the Chatham House international affairs think tank in London that the decision “was clearly made without relevance to any fact whatsoever” and criticized the involvement of Congress.
“It’s been flipped over to the Congress with instructions, you guys fix it.
“How the US Congress, which wasn’t part of the negotiations, which isn’t certified to be part of the negotiations, fixes an agreement which is working is beyond me,” he adds.
— AFP
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says US President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East adviser Jared Kushner is behind the abrupt resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri over the weekend.
In a series of tweets, Zarif says Kushner’s visit to Saudi Arabia coincided with Hariri’s, during which he announced his resignation on Saturday.
Visits by Kushner & Lebanese PM led to Hariri's bizarre resignation while abroad. Of course, Iran is accused of interference. 2/
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) November 6, 2017
KSA is engaged in wars of aggression, regional bullying, destabilizing behavior & risky provocations. It blames Iran for the consequences.4/
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) November 6, 2017
He accuses Riyadh of being engaged in “wars of aggression, regional bullying, destabilizing behavior and risky provocations.”
Authorities say they believe the gunman behind the weekend shooting in a small-town Texas church fatally shot himself after being chased from the crime scene.
The assailant, formally identified Monday as 26-year-old Devin Kelley, walked into the church in Sutherland Springs with an assault rifle Sunday, killing 26 people and wounding 20 more.
“At this time we believe that he had a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt tells CBS News.
Tackitt recounted how a local citizen — who was also armed — had engaged, and then pursued the gunman as he exited the First Baptist Church.
“A citizen was across the street. They engaged in a firefight for just a little bit,” he says. “The suspect gets in his vehicle and takes off.”
“This — I’m calling him hero — here in town, then stops a truck, and says, ‘I need help. This guy just shot up the church: Follow him.'”
“There was some gunfire exchanged I think on the roadway also, and then he wrecked out,” Tackitt says, adding that he apparently shot himself after crashing his vehicle.
— AFP
The High Court of Justice is giving the state 10 days to respond to a petition filed earlier today by the bereaved family of an IDF soldier whose body is being held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas terrorist group.
The family of Lt. Hadar Goldin is requesting the court order the government to implement the “plan of action” adopted by the security cabinet earlier this year that called for further pressure to be levied against Hamas until the bodies of Goldin and Sgt. Oron Shaul, along with the living Israelis being held in the Palestinian territory, are returned.
In January, the security cabinet announced a number of measures aimed at pressuring Hamas into returning the Israeli civilians and the remains of the two soldiers.
The US embassy in Turkey says its missions in the country have resumed processing visa applications by Turkish citizens on a “limited basis.”
The embassy announced the decision on Monday, a day before Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is due to travel to the United States to meet US Vice President Mike Pence for talks aimed at mending frayed ties between the two NATO allies.
Last month, Turkish authorities detained a Turkish employee of the US Consulate in Istanbul, fraying already strained ties between the two countries. The US halted most visa services for Turkish citizens at US missions in Turkey. Turkey retaliated by halting visa services in the US for Americans.
The US embassy said it had received “high-level assurances” from Turkey that no additional employees were under investigation.
— AP
Iran has eased conditions for opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi, who has been under house arrest since 2011, allowing him to receive visitors, according to one of his sons.
Mohammed Hossein Karroubi was speaking to ISNA and ILNA news agencies, which are close to the Iranian reformist camp.
“Since his release from hospital (in mid-August), members of his family, his children, his daughters-in-law and his grandchildren have been able to see him… at any time and without any problem,” he says.
Karroubi, who turned 80 in September, has also been allowed to receive political figures at home, after their names were cleared by the authorities, his son adds.
— AFP
A senior US diplomat says Washington will continue to take part in talks about implementing the Paris climate accord, despite US President Donald Trump’s threat to pull out of the pact.
Trump announced in June that the United States will withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement unless he can get a better deal for the United States.
Trigg Talley, the US deputy special envoy for climate change, told delegates at the opening of the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, that “we will continue to participate in international climate change negotiations and meetings, including ongoing negotiations related to guidance for implementing the Paris agreement.”
He adds: “We look forward to working with colleagues and partners to advance the work here over these two weeks and beyond.”
— AP
A prominent Egyptian rights lawyer says he will run for president in next year’s elections. The move is unlikely to seriously challenge the incumbent general-turned-president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, but will test his popularity at a time of deep economic hardship, a relentless crackdown on dissent and a simmering insurgency.
Khaled Ali announces his candidacy to a packed news conference at the headquarters of the opposition al-Dustour party, saying, “Egypt is in crisis… we are working with other democratic parties to ensure real guarantees for this battle.”
His candidacy faces major hurdles, the most pressing being a potential obscenity conviction that would make him ineligible if his appeal is rejected. The next hearing over the charges, widely seen as politically motivated to block his run, is on November 8.
— AP
Saudi Arabia has barred Yemen’s president, along with his sons, ministers and other officials, from returning to the country for months, Yemeni officials tell The Associated Press.
Hadi and many of his officials fled to Saudi early on in the war in Yemen, now in its third year, and have lived in Riyadh for much of it.
The officials say the kingdom made the decision ostensibly to protect Hadi and his government, but added that it was also designed to appease the United Arab Emirates, its top ally, which is hostile to Hadi and opposed to his return. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the two major pillars of an Arab coalition battling Shiite Houthis rebels in Yemen, under the pretext of restoring Hadi’s legitimate government to power. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.
In August, Hadi was turned back at Riyadh airport as he tried to return to Yemen, one official says. Hadi has repeatedly asked Saudi King Salman to allow him to return, but has not received a reply, he adds.
— AP
The gunman who murdered 26 people at a Texas church yesterday is believed to have been driven by a “domestic” dispute, an official says.
“This was not racially motivated, it wasn’t over religious beliefs. There was a domestic situation going on with the family and in-laws,” Freeman Martin, regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, tells a news conference.
“The suspect’s mother-in-law attended this church,” he says, adding that 26-year-old shooter Devin Patrick Kelley had sent “threatening texts” prior to the mass shooting.
— AFP
A charity is accusing British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of leaving a British-Iranian woman facing more prison time by making an inaccurate statement about why she was in Iran.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is serving a five-year sentence for plotting the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government.
Johnson told a parliamentary committee last week that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “simply teaching people journalism as I understand it,” when she was arrested at Tehran airport last year.
After the remarks, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was summoned to an unscheduled court hearing, where Johnson’s comments were cited as proof that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime.”
The Iranian judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights said Johnson’s comments proved Zaghari-Ratcliffe “had visited the country for anything but a holiday.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s employer, Thomson Reuters Foundation, said she hadn’t been working in Iran, but was on vacation, taking her toddler daughter to visit relatives.
Chief Executive Monique Villa said Zaghari-Ratcliffe “is not a journalist and has never trained journalists at the Thomson Reuters Foundation,” where she works as a project manager. Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable arm of the news agency.
Villa urged Johnson to correct his “serious mistake,” saying it “can only worsen her sentence.”
— AP
Berlin police say they are investigating the disappearance in the German capital of more than a half-dozen “stumbling stones” — small brass plaques placed in the sidewalks outside of the former homes of Jews and other victims of the Nazis.
Police say that residents in the central Neukoelln district reported the small memorials missing from several streets.
The project was initiated in 1996 by artist Gunter Demnig, and seeks to bring back the names of Jews and others to places where they once lived. Each square plaque carries the name of the victim and information about when they were deported and where they were killed.
Demnig says on his website that more than 60,000 of the plaques have been installed across Europe.
— AP
A speech by Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely at Princeton University has been “indefinitely postponed,” until the event is revised by a campus Jewish group.
According to The Daily Princetonian, the Center for Jewish Life has shelved Hotovely’s speech scheduled for tomorrow until it is vetted by the CJL’s advisory committee.
Hotovely is on a pro-Israel advocacy speaking tour in the US. She is also scheduled to speak at Columbia and New York University.
The Turkish Embassy in Washington says it is resuming visa services on a “limited basis” in the United States, after an almost month-long suspension in a diplomatic spat between the NATO allies.
The embassy’s move was announced on Twitter and comes immediately after the US said it was also resuming limited visa services. The mutual resumption was made a day before Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is due to arrive in Washington for talks with US Vice President Mike Pence.
— AFP
