ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 426
Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s developments as they unfolded.
A senior Israeli government minister is due to visit Turkey this week in the first such trip since the Jewish state and Ankara normalized relations after a six-year estrangement, an official says.
Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz will attend the World Energy Congress in Istanbul on Thursday, an official from the Israeli embassy tells AFP.
The official says it is “not certain” yet if the Israeli minister will meet with his Turkish counterpart, Berat Albayrak, on the sidelines of the congress.
Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources Yuval Steinitz Yuval Steinitz seen at the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, September 27, 2016. (Marc Israel Sellem/POOL)
Israel and Turkey signed a deal in June to restore ties.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul as the two leaders push toward normalizing ties that were strained by Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane near the border with Syria last year.
Putin is scheduled to meet Erdogan Monday on the sidelines of the World Energy Congress.
The two are expected to advance joint energy projects, including Russian plans for a natural gas pipeline, called “Turkish Stream,” that would carry gas beneath the Black Sea to Turkey and to European markets. Russia is also building Turkey’s first nuclear power station.
— Agencies
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Konstantin palace outside St. Petersburg, Russia, August 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sends condolences to the families of the two Israelis murdered in a Jerusalem terror attack on Sunday.
The fatalities in the attack at Ammunition Hill are Levana Malihi, 60, a grandmother and retired Knesset employee, and police officer First Sergeant Yosef Kirma, 29.
“Yesterday was a sad day for Jerusalem,” Netanyahu says. “I am sending condolences to the families of our friend, Levana Malihi. I think that anyone who was in the Knesset remembers her radiant smile. We cry with her family, and with the family of the heroic policeman, Yossi Kirma, who chased after the terrorist and lost his life in the chase, which, without a doubt, saved many lives.”
Netanyahu says Israel is entering the holiday season, when the threat of terrorism is heightened and “terror supporters and inciters try to fan the flames.”
“We need citizens to be vigilant, and certainly the security forces as well, who are working day and night to protect us and serve as a buffer and a wall between these murderers and the citizens of Israel,” Netanyahu says.
Jerusalem resident Levana Malihi, 60, left, and police officer First Sergeant Yosef Kirma, 29, who were shot dead in a terror attack in Jerusalem, October 9, 2016. (Police spokesperson)
Simcha Goldin, whose son’s body is being held by the Hamas terror group in Gaza, urges Israel not to release the remains of the Jerusalem terrorist for burial.
Goldin tells Israel Radio that the attacker, 39, whose name is under a court-imposed gag order, is a Hamas member and therefore Israel should withhold his body so long as the remains of Israeli soldiers remain in the custody of the Gaza-based terror group.
IDF soldier Hadar Goldin was killed in Gaza on August 1, 2014. His body, along with that of IDF soldier Oron Shaul, are being held in the coastal enclave.
Simcha Goldin speaking at the funeral of his son Hadar at the Kfar Saba cemetery Sunday August 3, 2014. His wife Leah is at his side. (Screen capture: Ynet)
Rocker Roger Waters savages Donald Trump with a pig balloon caricature as he vowed to make the most of his platform Sunday at a first-of-a-kind festival of rock elders.
The former Pink Floyd songwriter, who also renews his longstanding criticism of Israel, closed out the first three-day weekend of Desert Trip which earlier brought the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney to a vast stage in California.
As Waters played “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” Pink Floyd’s 1977 assault on power mongers, an oversize swine-like balloon floated into the crowd with a sketch on it of the Republican presidential candidate.
“Ignorant, lying, racist, sexist,” ran the words on the balloon’s side, as overhead screens flashed inflammatory quotes from Trump including his boasts of groping women that were recently aired in an explosive video.
Unflattering drawings of Trump — in one he is naked with a miniscule member and in another he androgynously has developed breasts — also appeared on screens before the message in bold letters: “Donald Trump is a Pig.”
Waters drives home the point with a notch more subtlety as he performed Pink Floyd’s classic “Another Brick in the Wall,” bringing to stage a troupe of singing teenagers, mostly ethnic minorities, who wore T-shirts that read “Derriba El Muro” — Spanish for “tear down the wall.”
Speaking to the 75,000-strong crowd, Waters hails California students at the forefront of the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that aims to exert economic and cultural pressure on Israel.
“It’s rare that somebody like me gets a platform like this, so I’m going to use this platform,” says the 73-year-old British rocker.
“I’m going to send out all my most heartfelt love and support to all those young people on the campuses of the universities of California who are standing up for their brothers and sisters in Palestine,” Waters says, hoping the boycott movement would “encourage the government of Israel to end the occupation.”
While Waters’ anti-Trump stance elicits cheers, albeit not universally, his statement on Israel draws a more muted response with some fans clapping but others booing and at least one proudly waving an Israeli flag as a counter-protest.
— AFP
Pro-Israel supporter Paul Antey waves the Israeli flag in protest against what he says is the anti-semite political beliefs of artist Roger Waters as he performs on stage during the third day of the Desert Trip music festival at Indio, California on October 9, 2016.(AFP PHOTO / Mark RALSTON)
Germany’s post-World War II justice ministry was infested with ex-Nazis hell-bent on protecting their former comrades, according to a new official study released Monday.
Fully 77 percent of senior ministry officials in 1957 were former members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, a higher proportion even than during the 1933-45 Third Reich, the study finds.
“We didn’t expect the figure to be this high,” says study co-author Christoph Safferling, who evaluated former ministry personnel files, speaking to the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
The fascist old-boys network closed ranks, enabling its members to shield each other from justice, the study finds — helping explain why so few Nazi war criminals ever went to prison.
“The Nazi-era lawyers went on to cover up old injustice rather than to uncover it and thereby created new injustice,” says Heiko Maas, Germany’s justice minister, who presents the report Monday.
— AFP
Israel Radio reports that an Israeli woman has died in Bolivia after suffering altitude sickness.
The tourist, who complained she wasn’t feeling well, died on the way to the hospital, the report says.
There is no immediate confirmation from the Foreign Ministry.
Jordan says Monday it will allow aid deliveries to tens of thousands of refugees on its border with Syria, which has been closed since a deadly attack on soldiers in June.
“In the coming weeks we will resume allowing humanitarian organizations to deliver aid to those stranded on the border,” Information Minister Mohamed Momani, who is also government spokesman, tells AFP.
The United Nations said in September that more than 70,000 Syrians were trapped in no-man’s land near the Rukban border crossing in “dire” conditions.
Since June, Jordan has allowed humanitarian organizations to send aid to the refugees just once, in early August, lifting it across the frontier using drones and cranes.
Momani says Monday that the government would allow humanitarian organizations to deliver aid by the same method, to be received and distributed by “elders and mayors” on the Syrian side.
He adds that it is a temporary measure.
“The borders will remain a closed military zone,” he says.
“The problem of those stranded there is an international one, not just a problem for Jordan.
“The United Nations and the international community should find alternative ways of delivering aid,” said the minister.
The kingdom has repeatedly said it is not receiving enough international help to share the burden of hosting Syrian refugees.
It says over 1.4 million Syrians are on its territory, of which 630,000 are registered with the UN.
— AFP
A police chief in eastern Germany says a young Syrian suspected of planning a bombing attack is believed to have Islamic State group contacts.
Saxony criminal police chief Joerg Michaelis also tells reporters in Dresden on Monday that 22-year-old Jaber Albakr had been on the radar of the country’s domestic intelligence agency since last month with “hints” he may be planning something.
Michaelis says at this stage of the investigation, “the behavior and actions of the suspect currently speak for an IS context.”
Albakr came to Germany as a refugee in 2015 and had been granted asylum.
Police say a fellow Syrian that Albakr approached at a train station led to his arrest early Monday.
— AP
Donald Trump’s campaign manager is walking back the Republican candidate’s threat during presidential debate to throw Hillary Clinton in jail if he is elected.
Kellyanne Conway says Monday that such a decision isn’t up to Trump. She says Trump’s threat “was a quip.”
Trump made the threat in Sunday’s debate, after Clinton said it’s good that someone with Trump’s temperament isn’t president. Trump responded: “Because you’d be in jail.”
Conway, speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” also stops short of confirming Trump’s vow to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Clinton’s email practices if he becomes president.
Conway says Trump was “channeling the frustration of thousands of voters he hears every day.”
— AP
Kellyanne Conway, left, campaign manager for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, attends his Hispanic advisory roundtable meeting in New York, Saturday, August 20, 2016. (AP /Gerald Herbert)
Husam Badran, a Hamas spokesman based in Qatar, calls in a statement Monday on terrorists in the West Bank to get ready “for a new phase of confrontation.”
He also accuses Israel of “targeting” the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and promises “a response from the heroic fighters.”
The statement comes a day after a Hamas member killed two Israelis and wounded five in a shooting rampage in Jerusalem.
— Agencies
Palestinian officials call on FIFA to kick out six Israeli clubs based in West Bank settlements ahead of a key meeting of soccer’s governing body.
FIFA’s executive committee is meeting Thursday and Friday and is expected to discuss the issue of clubs in the Israeli football league based in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
In a letter to FIFA president Gianni Infantino seen by AFP Monday, the Palestine Football Association calls on FIFA to demand the Israeli soccer association expel the clubs or force them to move inside Israel’s recognized borders.
It said the world soccer body was failing to enforce its policies on “illegal, immoral and unethical behavior” as it was “permitting association football to be organized on the basis of an occupying power’s internationally prohibited acts.”
— AFP
The Israel Police will deploy additional troops throughout Jerusalem starting Tuesday morning, when thousands of worshipers are expected to flock to the Western Wall in the run-up to the Yom Kippur holiday on Tuesday evening.
Security restrictions will be felt beginning Monday night, when all private vehicles except for those of residents will be blocked from entering the Old City.
Volunteer police patrols will secure synagogues in Jerusalem neighborhoods over the Yom Kippur holiday, which ends Wednesday evening, police say.
Checkpoints will also be set up around Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
President Reuven Rivlin visits the bereaved families of Levana Malihi, 60, and police officer First Sergeant Yosef Kirma, 29, who were killed in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“The sadness is great and these hours are very difficult,” says Rivlin in a tweet. “My only wish was to leave them with the knowledge that the entire nation is crying along with them.”
הגעתי היום לנחם את משפחות ההרוגים מהפיגוע בירושלים. העצב גדול והשעות האלו קשות מאוד. כל בקשתי הייתה להשאירם עם הידיעה שכל העם בוכה כאן איתם pic.twitter.com/LG7VCkTj3E
— ראובן (רובי) ריבלין (@rubirivlin) October 10, 2016
Israeli security forces arrest the teenage daughter of the East Jerusalem man who killed two Israelis in a shooting spree.
Eiman, 14, daughter of the 39-year-old gunman, of Silwan, was held and questioned with her mother for more than an hour on Monday morning, before the teen was detained, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports.
The arrest comes after a video of the teen praising her father went viral on Facebook.
“We deem my father as martyr,” she said in the video, according to Maan. “We hope he will plead for us before God on judgment day… I am proud of what my father did.”
“We’re very happy and proud of our father,” she also said. “My father is a great man. Our relationship, as father and daughter, was excellent.”
— JTA
Mike Pence is standing by Donald Trump, saying he never considered leaving the Trump ticket.
Following the latest presidential debate, Pence says Monday that he believes Trump is sorry for the crude and predatory language about women he made in a 2005 video that became public last week.
Pence tells Fox News that Trump “stepped up” during the debate: “He showed humility. He showed strength. He expressed genuine contrition for the words he had used” in the video.
He later tells CNN that he never considered dropping off Trump’s ticket. He says: “It’s the greatest honor of my life.”
— AP
Republican candidate for Vice President Mike Pence speaks during the vice presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia on October 4, 2016. (AFP / SAUL LOEB)
The Israeli army announces Monday it will be sealing off the West Bank and Gaza Strip over Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, from Tuesday to Wednesday.
The military says it will make exceptions for medical emergencies and “humanitarian cases,” with the approval of the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).
The closure will take effect on Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. and is expected to last until Wednesday at 11:59 p.m., dependent upon a “situational assessment,” the army says in a statement.
Yom Kippur, considered the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, begins Tuesday at sundown and ends Wednesday night.
While the decision to close off the West Bank and Gaza comes after a deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem, in which a Palestinian terrorist killed two Israelis and injured five more, the army routinely seals off the West Bank on Jewish holidays.
— Judah Ari Gross
Ethiopia’s government on Monday blames Egypt for supporting outlawed rebels and forcing the declaration of the country’s first state of emergency in a quarter-century as widespread anti-government protests continue.
There is “ample evidence” that Egypt provided training and financing to the Oromo Liberation Front, labeled a terrorist organization by Ethiopia, government spokesman Getachew Reda tells journalists in the capital, Addis Ababa. “We know for a fact that the terrorist group OLF is receiving all kinds of support from Egypt.”
Egypt last week denied any support for the Ethiopian rebels.
The six-month state of emergency declared Sunday will be used to reorganize the security forces to better respond to the anti-government protests throughout much of the Oromia region, Getachew says.
— AP
Germany on Monday hails three Syrians who helped police capture a compatriot suspected of planning a jihadist bomb attack, with social media coming alive with jibes against anti-migrant protesters.
“Syrian turns in terror suspect. I’m celebrating this. What about you, Pegida and co?” says Julia Frick on Twitter, in reference to the Islamophobic movement that has been ranting against migrants in the eastern city of Dresden.
Another Twitter user takes a dig at the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been running an aggressive campaign against asylum seekers.
“Syrian turns in terror suspect tied up to police — that’s precisely the kind of citizen watch that AfD and Pegida like to drone on about,” tweets Florian Flade.
Another using the handle Kraftklub quips that “the foreigners are taking jobs away from police,” turning around a common stereotype used by anti-migrant politicians.
“Detained terrorists: Pegida and company: 0, refugee: 1,” says another user with the handle likedeeler.
The informants had overpowered the suspect and tied him up in their apartment before calling in police, who finally took him away before dawn.
Chancellor Angela Merkel led praise for the Syrians, with her spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer pointing to “recognition for the Syrian who informed police about the suspect’s whereabouts,” leading to his arrest.
— AFP
Egyptian parliamentarians are reportedly demanding an investigation into an American Cairo-based school, after learning its history curriculum asserts that Israel won the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
According to Army Radio, the prestigious institution is run by the US Embassy in Cairo, which also designs its curriculum. Its students are primarily the children of foreign diplomats and Egyptian politicians, the report says.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, sends a letter to the UN Security Council urging the body to demand that the Palestinian Authority condemns Sunday’s deadly terror attack in Jerusalem.
Danon also sends photos of Palestinians celebrating and handing out candy after the shooting, in which two Israelis were killed.
“You must demand from the Palestinian Authority that it end the incitement immediately and forcefully condemn the murder in Jerusalem,” he writes, according to a statement from Danon’s office.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon speaking before an emergency session of the Security Council, March 3, 2016. (Courtesy)
Israeli doctors have successfully transplanted a 3-D printed vertebra into a patient’s spine, Channel 2 reports.
According to the TV report, this is the first time doctors have performed such a procedure, at this scope, in the world.
WikiLeaks publishes more than 2,000 new emails purportedly belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
The anti-secrecy website posts a link to what it calls “part two” of its release of John Podesta’s emails.
Last week, WikiLeaks made public potentially damaging revelations about Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street firms.
The emails showed Clinton telling a group that it’s acceptable for a president to project differing positions in public and private.
Clinton said in Sunday’s debate that she was alluding to Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to get Congress to abolish slavery.
— AP
Speaker Paul Ryan is telling congressional Republicans that he won’t defend Donald Trump now or in the future and will spend the next month defending his party’s House majority.
The Wisconsin Republican is holding a conference call with GOP lawmakers. Many of them are worried that their party’s presidential candidate is hurting their chances of winning re-election and is threatening their majority control of the House.
One person involved in the call says Ryan has not withdrawn his support for Trump, but has said he won’t defend him, either. Instead, he’ll campaign for GOP congressional candidates.
Another says Ryan has told lawmakers that he won’t campaign with Trump. And he is advising GOP candidates “to do what’s best for you in your district.”
— AP
As the death toll from Hurricane Matthew continues to rise, Jewish groups are working to help victims in the United States and the Caribbean.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is focusing its efforts on Haiti, where it was working with relief group Heart to Heart International to provide hygiene kits, water purification tablets and other aid to those on the island’s highly affected southern part.
Also in Haiti, the World Jewish Relief is providing emergency assistance, including food, water, shelter and hygiene kits. The American Jewish World Service is sending relief funds to aid groups in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
A woman who identified herself as Valerie walks along flooded President Street after leaving her homeless camp after Hurricane Matthew caused flooding, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2016, in Savannah, Georgia. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
The Mexican Jewish humanitarian group Cadena dispatches volunteers to Haiti to help with search-and-rescue efforts and relief work there.
Chabad emissaries in US help provide assistance to victims, including by using their houses to provide shelter and distributing Shabbat meals and care packages over the weekend to students and residents in Florida.
The Jewish Federations of North America is opening an emergency fund to collect money to mobilize humanitarian support and provide relief to Jewish communities in the path of the hurricane.
— JTA
Netanyahu visits a police officer injured in Sunday’s Jerusalem shooting attack.
At the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, the prime minister tells the police officer from the reconnaissance Yasam unit: “This unit is the key to preventing catastrophe, and that’s precisely what happened, you prevented a larger catastrophe.”
After the meeting, Netanyahu says “there is nothing more emotional and uplifting than meeting with our police officers, our heroes.”
He reiterates that the police — including Yosef Kirma, who was killed in the shootout — had thwarted a larger attack.
“This policeman that I met here is a new immigrant and he only has one thought — how quickly he can get back to his unit and keep serving the people of Israel,” Netanyahu says.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with police officers injured in a Jerusalem shooting attack at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital on October 10, 2016 (Haim Zach/GPO)
House Speaker Paul Ryan is all but conceding Hillary Clinton will be the next president.
In a conference call Monday morning with House Republicans, Ryan tells them that he will not defend Donald Trump or campaign with him for the next 30 days.
Instead, he says, he will spend “his entire energy making sure that Hillary Clinton does not get a blank check with a Democrat-controlled Congress.”
That’s according to a person on the call who demanded anonymity to describe the private conversation.
— AP
Romania, which denied its role in the Holocaust for years, is to open the first state-run museum dedicated to the country’s Jewish community, once one of the largest in Europe before World War II.
The museum, due to open in 2018 in the capital Bucharest, will focus on the persecution of Jews and the Roma, says Alexandru Florian, the director of the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust.
“It will illustrate the role played by Jews in Romania’s modernization, as well as fight prejudice and the denial of the Shoah,” Florian tells AFP.
So far, the privately-run museum in Bucharest’s Holy Union Temple synagogue has been the main custodian of Jewish history in Romania.
— AFP
In their phone conversation on Saturday night, Netanyahu told US Secretary of State John Kerry he expects the Obama administration will not support a UN Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Haaretz reports.
Kerry told Netanyahu, who had outlined Israel’s position on the matter, that the US administration has not yet made a decision on the matter.
Speaker Paul Ryan is not un-endorsing Donald Trump. And his office says he’s not conceding that Hillary Clinton will be the next president.
Ryan tells Republican lawmakers in a conference call that he will spend “his entire energy making sure that Hillary Clinton does not get a blank check with a Democrat-controlled Congress.”
Several pro-Trump lawmakers interpret that as a defeatist attitude. They speak on condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.
— AP
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton jumps to a double-digit lead Monday over Donald Trump in the first poll carried out since the release of a recording in which the Republican bragged about groping women.
Clinton enjoys 46 percent support among likely voters against 35% for Trump in a four-way race that includes Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, according to the NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey.
In a two-way race, Clinton’s lead over the real estate mogul expands to 14 points, 52 % to 38%, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
The poll was carried out after Friday’s release of the shocking audio recording of Trump speaking in 2005, but before Sunday night’s second presidential debate between him and Clinton.
A total of 52% of those polled said the recording should be a campaign issue, and 42% say it should not be.
— AFP
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton facing off during the first presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, September 26, 2016. (AFP/Paul J. Richards)
Israeli security agencies now believe that Israeli pilot Ron Arad, captured 30 years ago in Lebanon, died in the early years of his captivity, Channel 2 reports.
In a joint report by the Directorate of Military Intelligence and the Mossad, which is based on some new information obtained in the past two years, Arad likely died by 1988, earlier than was previously believed.
Arad’s family has been updated on the Israeli security assessment, the TV report says.
The report notes that much of the information remains under wraps.
Ron Arad (photo: IAF)
A 2004 IDF commission determined that Arad had died in the 1990s after being denied medical treatment for a serious illness, and been buried in the Beqaa Valley. In 2006, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the group believed Arad was dead and his burial site unknown and in 2008, German negotiator Gerhard Konrad told Israel that Hezbollah said Arad died during a 1988 escape attempt.
Israel declared Ron Arad dead in 2008.
Donald Trump’s chief spokesman says “nothing’s changed” — even after House Speaker Paul Ryan said he is focusing on ensuring Hillary Clinton doesn’t get a blank check as president.
Jason Miller dismisses Ryan’s comments on Monday. Miller tweets that, “Mr. Trump’s campaign has always been powered by a grassroots movement, not Washington.”
— AP
Israel Police arrest eight rioters for throwing rocks at Rachel’s Tomb, near Bethlehem.
Six of the rock-throwers are minors, police say.
The Republican presidential nominee is lashing out at the Republican Party’s top elected official.
Donald Trump tweeted Monday afternoon that House Speaker Paul Ryan “should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee.”
Trump’s comments were in response to Ryan’s remarks in a conference call with Republican lawmakers that he won’t defend Trump and will spend the next month defending his party’s House majority.
Ryan told Republicans he’s now focused on ensuring Hillary Clinton doesn’t get a blank check as president with a Democratic-controlled Congress.
— AP
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives at the Republican National Committee (RNC) headquarters on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on May 12, 2016, to meet with House Speaker Paul Ryan. (AFP/ Nicholas Kamm)
