ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 364
The Times of Israel liveblogged Thursday’s events as they happened.
Lina Abu Akleh blasts the Biden administration for its refusal to open an independent investigation into the May 11 killing of her aunt Shireen, a Palestinian-American reporter for Al Jazeera.
“It’s been almost four months now with no accountability and no action from the US administration,” Lina Abu Akleh says during a press conference organized by the National Press Club in Washington.
The Biden administration condemned the killing that was the result of a firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen during an IDF raid of the northern West Bank city of Jenin. However, it has refrained from opening its own investigation, sufficing with the findings of Israeli and Palestinian investigators, along with a ballistics analysis of the bullet, which turned out to be inconclusive. The US says the IDF was likely responsible for the death but that she was not shot on purpose.
Lina Abu Akleh was in Washington last month meeting with two other relatives and they met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken along with a handful of US lawmakers. They have found a sympathetic audience in progressive Democrats who are also calling on the administration to conduct its own probe, but support for the initiative has largely ended there.
“We appreciate some of the light commitments that were made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken… to be transparent with our family, but that’s been it,” Abu Akleh says.
She calls on the Biden administration to present its next steps in the pursuit of justice for her aunt and urges lawmakers to support legislation mandating a US probe into Abu Akleh’s killing. The bill was introduced in July but is unlikely to pass due to a lack of widespread support.
Less than half of Israelis are firmly opposed to MK Itamar Ben Gvir serving as a government minister, according to a television poll, amid a rise in support for the far-right lawmaker.
Asked if they would want Ben Gvir to be a minister, 48 percent of the respondents to the Channel 13 news poll said no, as opposed to 27% who said yes. Another 17% said they don’t care, and the remaining 8% didn’t know.
Ben Gvir, who heads the extremist Otzma Yehudit party and is a disciple of the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane, last week reached a deal to run in the upcoming elections with fellow far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is seeking to return to power in the November 1 vote, helped broker the deal.
The TV survey forecast Netanyahu’s opposition right-wing religious bloc, which includes the joint Smotrich-Ben Gvir slate, would win 59 seats, two short needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Parties that back the outgoing government picked up 56 seats in the poll, while the opposition Joint List of majority Arab parties got five seats.
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked’s Zionist Spirit received 2 percent of votes in the poll, short of the threshold parties must clear to enter the Knesset.
Likud: 32
Yesh Atid: 24
National Unity: 13
Religious Zionism-Otzma Yehudit: 12
Shas: 8
United Torah Judaism: 7
Yisrael Beytenu: 6
Labor: 5
Joint List: 5
Meretz: 4
Ra’am: 4
The poll was made up of 704 respondents, with a 3.7% margin of error.
NOVOOLEKSANDRIVKA, Ukraine — The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that the “physical integrity” of the Moscow-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine has been “violated” after the facility has been frequently shelled.
“It is obvious that the plant and physical integrity of the plant has been violated several times,” Rafael Grossi, who is leading an inspection of the plant, tells reporters after he returned with part of his team to the Ukrainian-controlled area.
Israel is gearing up for tensions to potentially further ratchet up in the West Bank amid a marked rise in clashes between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli troops carrying out raids, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
The report attributes the increase in gunfire directed toward Israeli forces, particularly in the northern West Bank, to the Palestinian Authority’s weakening grip on areas under its control.
According to the report, which does not cite a source, Israel has been deliberating measures to strengthen the PA, including the possible release of security prisoners linked to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.
A lawyer for the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group has been charged with conspiracy in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack at the US Capitol, authorities say today.
Kellye SoRelle — general counsel for the antigovernment group — was arrested in Texas on charges including conspiracy to obstruct the certification of US President Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, the Justice Department says.
SoRelle, 43, is a close associate of Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ leader who is heading to trial later this month alongside other extremists on seditious conspiracy charges.
After Rhodes’ arrest in January, SoRelle told media outlets she was acting as the president of the Oath Keepers while he’s behind bars.
Prosecutors have accused Rhodes and his militia group of plotting for weeks to stop the transfer of power and keep former US president Donald Trump in office, purchasing weapons, organizing military-style training and setting up battle plans.
SoRelle told The Associated Press last year — when FBI agents seized her phone as part of the January 6 investigation — that she had no knowledge of or involvement in the Capitol breach. She called the seizure of her phone “unethical” and the investigation “a witch hunt.”
She is expected to make an initial appearance in federal court in Austin, Texas, later today and it isn’t immediately clear if she has an attorney to speak on her behalf.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran puts the FIFA World Cup trophy on display for the first time, part of the trophy’s global tour ahead of the tournament that kicks off in neighboring Qatar in November.
The trophy display ceremony is held today in Tehran’s Milad Tower hall in the capital, with hundreds of spectators looking on. They include city and football officials, veteran football players, and Dragam Skokic, the head coach of Iran’s national football team.
Ahmad Reza Abedzadeh, who captained Iran’s team in the 1998 World Cup in France, unveils the trophy.
The trophy tour includes every nation that has qualified for the tournament.
Iran, the earliest qualifier, will start the World Cup as an underdog with both England and the USA ranked higher by FIFA. It will be the sixth time that Iran is present in the World Cup in the nation’s history.
MOSCOW — The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says that the UN agency will be “staying” at the Moscow-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine that has been frequently shelled.
“The IAEA is staying here. Let the world know that the IAEA is staying at Zaporizhzhia,” Rafael Grossi, who is leading an inspection of the plant, says in a video released by the Russian RIA Novosti news agency. He doesn’t specify how many people will be staying and for how long.
The German government rejects a Polish call to negotiate World War II reparations with Berlin after Warsaw estimated the financial cost of its losses to be 1.3 trillion euros.
“The German government’s position is unchanged, the reparations issue is closed,” a foreign ministry spokesman says in an email to AFP. He points to a 1953 decision by Poland to renunciate reparation claims against East Germany, which he called a “significant foundation for Europe’s order today.”
Deputy Education Minister Meir Yitzhak Halevi announces that he is leaving politics and will not seek a seat in the next Knesset.
Halevi entered the Knesset as a member of Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope faction, which recently merged with Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s Blue and White to form the National Unity party. He was offered the 13th spot on the new party’s electoral slate for the November 1 vote, but declined to run.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz hails the signing of a contract by the US Department of Defense to allow aircraft manufacturer Boeing to supply Israel with four KC-46 refueling planes.
“The refueling planes we are purchasing, along with the procurement of a new F-35 squadron, heavy transport helicopters, submarines, and advanced armaments — will serve the IDF amid the enormous challenges, near and far, that are about to be faced,” Gantz says in a statement.
“This is further proof of the alliance and the strategic relations of the Israeli and American defense establishments,” he adds.
MOSCOW — The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says he saw what he “needed to see” at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that has been frequently shelled.
“I think we were able in these few hours to put together a lot, a lot of information. The key things I needed to see I saw, and your explanations were very clear,” Rafael Grossi tells Russian media accompanying the IAEA inspection team at the Moscow-controlled atomic plant.
Two wanted Palestinians have been arrested by Border Police officers in the town of Yamun near Jenin, a police official says.
The two men are affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, according to the official.
The Yamas police unit and other Border Police officers are now leaving the area, the official says.
There are no injuries reported.
Aircraft manufacturer Boeing has signed a contract with the US Department of Defense to supply Israel with four KC-46 refueling planes, the company says in a statement.
The aircraft would be needed in order to conduct strikes against targets in Iran, some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from Israel and far outside the regular flight range of Israeli jets.
They are scheduled to arrive in 2025 at the earliest. Israel has asked that this date be moved up — which would require the US to give up its spot in line to receive the planes from Boeing — but Washington has thus far rejected the request.
Palestinian media reports say Israeli forces have entered the town of Yamun, near the West Bank city of Jenin, during a rare daytime raid.
The reports say troops have surrounded a building in the town.
There is no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid meets with Mossad chief David Barnea ahead of the latter’s trip next week to the US for talks on the emerging Iran nuclear deal.
“The meeting focused on the nuclear deal with Iran and preparation of the Mossad head for the continued Israeli effort on the issue,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office says.
MOSCOW — Russia launches large-scale military exercises involving several Kremlin-friendly countries, including China, with tensions soaring between Moscow and Western capitals.
The exercises, called Vostok-2022, are scheduled to take place until September 7 across several training grounds in Russia’s Far East and in the waters off its eastern coast.
The drills come as Russia is locked in a standoff with Western nations over what Moscow calls its military operation in pro-Western Ukraine.
The active stage of the exercises kicked off this morning with combat aircraft, anti-aircraft unit drills and mine clearance simulations in the Sea of Japan, the Russian defense ministry says.
“Combat aviation crews will have to train in the interception of air targets… and conduct airstrikes on ground targets,” the ministry says in a statement.
The ministry released images showing military aircraft taking off and flying in formation, as well as Pantsir anti-aircraft vehicles conducting maneuvers.
According to Moscow, over 50,000 soldiers and more than 5,000 units of military equipment, including 140 aircraft and 60 ships, will be involved in the drills.
Participating countries include several of Russia’s neighbors, as well as Syria, India and key ally China.
Similar drills were last held in 2018.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says he expects Israel to take part in international sanctions on Russia over its invasion of his country, after speaking with Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
“I count on his country’s accession to the sanctions on Russia and provision of practical assistance to Ukraine in countering the aggression of the Russian Federation,” Zelensky writes on Twitter.
He also notes it was his first phone call with Lapid, who became premier in June after then-prime minister Naftali Bennett resigned following the collapse of the government.
I've held the first telephone conversation with the new Prime Minister of Israel @yairlapid. I count on his country’s accession to the sanctions on Russia and provision of practical assistance to Ukraine in countering the aggression of the Russian Federation.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 1, 2022
MOSCOW — Russian energy firm Lukoil says its chairman Ravil Maganov had passed away following a “serious illness,” after Russian media reports said he died after falling out of a hospital window.
Lukoil was one of the few major Russian companies to call for end of fighting in Ukraine after Moscow sent its troops to the pro-Western country in February.
In a statement at the time, the Lukoil board called for an “immediate” end to the fighting, expressing its sympathy to those affected by the “tragedy.”
“We deeply regret to announce that Ravil Maganov… passed away following a serious illness,” Lukoil says today without providing further details about his death.
Several Russian media had earlier reported that Maganov died after falling out of a window of the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow.
It is often called the Kremlin Hospital because it counts Russia’s political and business elites among its patients.
“This morning Maganov fell out of a window of the Central Clinical Hospital. He died from his injuries,” Interfax news agency reported quoting an “informed” source.
According to a police source of RBC business daily, Maganov fell from the sixth-floor window of the hospital.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters today that Maganov’s death was not a matter for the Kremlin.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke by phone today with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the premier’s office says.
According to a statement from Lapid’s office, the premier wished Zelensky a happy independence day — which Ukraine marked last week — and highlighted his support for Ukraine. The two also discussed the fighting in Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, with the prime minister expressing condolences for those killed and wounded and calling for a diplomatic solution.
He also urges Israelis not to visit the western Ukrainian city of Uman during Rosh Hashanah.
President Isaac Herzog will visit Germany next week on an official state visit, his office announces.
Herzog and his wife Michal, who were invited by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will be in Germany September 4-6, during which they will attend an official memorial ceremony marking 50 years since the Munich Olympics massacre.
While in Germany, Herzog will also hold meetings with Steinmeier and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, address the Bundestag and visit the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
The announcement of Herzog’s trip comes a day after Germany said it reached an agreement on compensation with the families of the 11 Israelis athletes killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics. The families previously threatened to boycott the memorial ceremony, saying the compensation offered had been too low.
ISLAMABAD — The Taliban announce they have arrested and will soon sentence an Afghan woman who appeared in a video on social media earlier this week and said a senior Taliban official forced her into marriage and raped her repeatedly.
In the video, the woman, who identified herself only by her first name Elaha, wept as she described being beaten and raped by former Taliban Interior Ministry spokesman Saeed Khosti. She said she was speaking from an apartment in Kabul where the Taliban had confined her after she tried to escape the country, and she pleaded for rescue.
“These may be my last words. He will kill me, but it is better to die once than to die every time,” she said.
After the video surfaces, the Taliban-run Supreme Court says in a tweet that Elaha had been arrested for defamation on orders of the chief justice Abdul Hakeem Haqqani. Without mentioning any trial taking place, it says she will “soon be sentenced according to Sharia law.”
“No one is allowed to harm the name of Mujahideen or defame the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the 20-years of holy jihad,” it says, referring to the Taliban and their war against US-led troops and the US-allied government, which the hardline insurgents toppled just over a year ago.
Since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021, Afghan women activists, as well as Amnesty International, have reported an increase in forced marriages of women — including cases where Taliban officials coerced women into marriage by intimidating them or their families.
WARSAW — Poland’s government estimates the financial cost of World War II losses at $1.3 trillion and says it will “ask Germany to negotiate these reparations.”
“It is a major sum of 6.2 trillion” zloty, Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling Law and Justice party, says at a conference, adding that receiving reparations would be a “long and difficult” process.
MOSCOW — A team of inspectors from the UN atomic agency has arrived at the Moscow-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, Russian RIA Novosti and Interfax news agencies report.
The visit of the 14-strong team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) comes as the plant — Europe’s largest nuclear facility — has suffered repeated shelling that Moscow and Kyiv accuse each other of carrying out.
WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s top politician says that the government will seek reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of his country.
Main ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski says it is Poland’s “obligation” to do so. He is speaking shortly ahead of the release a long-awaited report on the cost to the country of years of Nazi German occupation as it marks 83 years since the start of World War II.
Poland’s right-wing government argues that the country, which was the war’s first victim, has not been fully compensated by neighboring Germany, which is now one of its major partners within the European Union.
Top leaders including Kaczynski, who is Poland’s chief policy maker, and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki are to attend the ceremonial release of the report at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. It is to be the main point of national observances of the anniversary of the war that began September 1, 1939, with Nazi Germany’s bombing and invading Poland, for more than five years of brutal occupation.
A team of some 30 economists, historians and other experts have worked on the report since 2017. The issue has created bilateral tensions.
The Foreign Ministry reiterates its travel warning for Ukraine, particularly the western city of Uman, citing the fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
The warning comes ahead of the Rosh Hashanah holiday later this month, when there is an annual pilgrimage to the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav in Uman.
“A few days ago missiles were fired toward the Uman area that led to the death of a citizen, the wounding of several others and major damage,” a statement from the Foreign Ministry says.
The ministry says any Israelis currently in Ukraine should leave immediately.
“The volatile security situation includes airstrikes or rocket fire on even civil communities and areas, including in the west of the country, which pose a real and immediate danger,” it adds.
BAGHDAD — Three militants were killed overnight after an ambush in the southern Iraqi city of Basra sparked clashes between rival Shiite factions, a security source says today, days after deadly clashes in the capital.
Two members of Saraya al-Salam — an armed faction linked to powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada L-Sadr — were killed when their vehicle came under fire from the Asaib Ahl al-Haq force, which lost one fighter in the ensuing gun battle, the source saYS.
Security forces deployed en masse to quell the fighting, and Basra’s governor Assad al-Eidani said this morning that the situation in the city was now “safe and under control.”
The exchange of fire triggered panic only days after clashes between Sadr supporters and rival Iran-backed factions turned Baghdad’s highly-secure Green Zone into a battlefield.
The lives of 30 Sadr supporters were lost in nearly 24 hours of clashes that erupted on Monday after they stormed the government headquarters in the Green Zone, which houses state institutions and foreign embassies.
The attack in Basra drew strong condemnation from Sadr representative Mohammed Saleh al-Iraqi, who lashed out at Qais al-Khazali, head of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq force.
“I warn you, Qais! If you do not restrain your insolent militias and if you do not absolve yourself of the murderers and criminals that are affiliated to you… you too are insolent,” he says in a statement on Twitter.
Asaib Ahl al-Haq is part of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a pro-Iran ex-paramilitary network now integrated into the country’s security forces.
Since elections in October 2021, Iraq has been paralyzed due to disagreement between Shiite factions over forming a coalition, leaving the country without a new government, prime minister or president.
MOSCOW — The Kremlin says that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the weekend funeral of former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev but has paid tribute to him.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Russian President Vladimir Putin visited a Moscow hospital where Mikhail Gorbachev’s body is being kept before Saturday’s funeral.
Peskov tells reporters that Putin’s schedule wouldn’t allow him to attend Saturday’s farewell ceremony, but paid tribute to late Soviet leader.
Asked if Gorbachev will be given a state funeral, Peskov says the funeral will have “elements” of a state funeral, such as honorary guards and other formalities.
The funeral for a Jewish man who killed in a recent antisemitic attack near Paris is being held in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
Eyal Haddad, 34, was killed in Longperrier, just northeast of Paris, on August 20. His neighbor, a Muslim man identified as Mohamed Dridi, confessed to killing him with an axe and attempting to burn and bury the body, according to a statement this week by the National Bureau of Vigilance against Antisemitism (BNVCA).
The BNVCA said the suspect turned himself in to the police and told officers that Haddad, who lived next door to him, owed him 100 euros and had not returned them. He later also confessed that he had killed Haddad because he was Jewish.
Haddad, who was originally from Tunisia, also had Israeli citizenship.
“He was killed because he was Jewish. He did not owe money or anything,” Haddad’s brother Elior tells Channel 12 news.
The chief rabbi of Beersheba says Haddad’s murder “was not only a tragedy for the Haddad family, but the entire [Jewish] community.”
“The antisemitism in France does not spare any Jew there. Eyal was merciful and compassionate,” Rabbi Yehuda Deri says.
חבר הכנסת יוסי טייב היחיד בלווית הנרצח מצרפת אלי חדד הי"ד.
הוא ספד לו: "כמה מטובי בנינו נרצחו בצרפת רק בשל היותם בני העם היהודי? אני מצפה להעניש את הרוצח במלוא חומרת הדין למען יישמעו וייראו".
טייב מעל שבוע בקשר עם המשפחה ומול הרשויות בצרפת ומנהיגי הקהילות שם להבאת קבורתו לארץ. pic.twitter.com/LulvGl0Pvs
— עטרה גרמן Atara German (@ataragerman1) September 1, 2022
