Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.
The head of the UN agency monitoring Iran’s compliance with a deal crimping its nuclear program says Tehran is honoring the agreement — an assessment that the White House is questioning, as it mulls upping the pressure on the Islamic Republic.
Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency says that the terms Iran accepted “are being implemented.”
The US administration has faced two 90-day certification deadlines to state whether Iran was meeting the conditions needed to continue enjoying sanctions relief under the deal and has both times backed away from a showdown. But US President Donald Trump more recently has said he does not expect to certify Iran’s compliance again. The next deadline is in mid-October.
Amano spoke in Vienna at the start of a 35-nation IAEA board meeting.
— AP
The High Court of Justice throws out a petition that would require some public transportation to operate on the Sabbath, in agreement with the state and the petitioners.
The move will allow the petitioners to file an official request for public transportation to operate on Saturday at the Ministry of Transportation.
If the ministry denies the request, the petitioners may again turn to the High Court.
The petitioners include a number of liberal groups and MK Tamar Zandberg of the left-wing Meretz party.
The UN human rights chief says violence and injustice faced by the ethnic Rohingya minority in Myanmar, where UN rights investigators have been barred from entry, “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Speaking at the start of a UN Human Rights Council session, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein denounces how “another brutal security operation is underway in Rakhine state — this time, apparently on a far greater scale.”
Zeid, a Jordanian prince, notes that the UN refugee agency has reported that 270,000 people have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in the last three weeks, and pointed to satellite imagery and reports of “security forces and local militia burning Rohingya villages” and extrajudicial killings.
He says that he is “further appalled” by reports of Myanmar authorities planting land mines along the border.
“The Myanmar government should stop pretending that the Rohingya are setting fire to their own homes and laying waste to their own villages,” he adds, calling it a “complete denial of reality” that hurts the standing of a country that recently enjoyed “immense good will.”
— AP
While the US contends with the destruction caused by two ferocious hurricanes in three weeks, Americans also are marking the 16th anniversary of one of the nation’s most scarring days.
Thousands of 9/11 victims’ relatives, survivors, rescuers and others are expected to gather Monday at the World Trade Center to remember the deadliest terror attack on American soil.
Observances also are planned at the Pentagon and the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Nearly 3,000 people died when hijacked planes slammed into the trade center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville on September 11, 2001.
US President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker, is observing the anniversary for the first time as the nation’s leader. The White House says he’ll observe a moment of silence and also participate in an observance at the Pentagon.
— AP
Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz calls on US President Donald Trump “to change or cancel the Iran deal,” warning that the Islamic Republic will otherwise become another nuclear renegade state like North Korea.
During a speech at a counterterrorism conference, Katz says Iran is on track to become a nuclear power when the deal expires. In the meantime, he says, Tehran is setting itself up in Syria with “tens of thousands” of fighters in Shiite militias.
The intelligence minister says that Iran is in the process of signing an agreement with Syrian leader Bashar Assad that would allow it to maintain bases, airports and fighters in the country for the long term.
“These militias, who come from around the Middle east, are meant to threaten Israel and open up another northern front,” he says.
Katz says the United States and other Western countries need to focus on blocking Iran from establishing hegemony in the region.
— Judah Ari Gross
France’s Interior Minister Gerard Collomb condems an anti-Semitic attack in which a French Jewish leader and his family were assaulted in their home.
The statement issued over the weekend by Collomb’s office reiterates the French government’s determination “to do everything to combat every form of racism and anti-Semitism, which have no place in the French Republic.”
Collomb’s statement expresses his “indignation” about the attack, which took place Thursday night, and “according to the first elements, the motivation for this cowardly act seems to be directly related to the religion of the victim.”
“Everything will be done to identify and arrest those who carried out this foul attack,” the statement adds.
— JTA
Supermarket chain Rami Levy denies the corruption allegations that saw its owner, Mevasseret Zion Mayor Yoram Shimon and two of their associates arrested yesterday.
“Neither Rami Levy nor the Mevasseret Mall received a discount or benefit for the city council,” the company says in a statement.
The company also adds that the Mevasseret Zion city council lacks the authority to approve the permits for the mall that police suspect were obtained by Rami Levy illegally.
According to reports, the permits to build were approved by the city council, with some NIS 20 million in property taxes waived by the council, reportedly at the behest of mayor and council head Shimon.
Shimon’s wife was later employed as the mall’s director of marketing, and a city council member was appointed the mall’s CEO.
Hurricane Irma is weakening to a tropical storm as it continues on a northward path through Florida, the National Hurricane Center says.
However, it was still producing “some wind gusts to near hurricane force.”
8 am EDT: #Irma has been downgraded to a tropical storm, but significant impacts are spreading inland. pic.twitter.com/7kXq2DUdbh
— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) September 11, 2017
As of this afternoon, Irma is about 105 miles (170 kilometers) northwest of Tampa, with maximum sustained winds of 70 miles per hour (110 kilometers per hour).
— AFP
Suspected jihadist militants ambush a police convoy in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing 18 police and wounding seven others, according to security and military officials, in one of the deadliest attacks this year in the turbulent region.
The police and military officials say the attack began with roadside bombs that destroyed and set ablaze four armored vehicles and a fifth one carrying signal jamming equipment.
The gunmen later opened fire with machine guns and commandeered a police pickup truck.
Among those killed were two police lieutenants. The wounded included a police brigadier general.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State jihadist group.
The attack took place about 30 kilometers (nearly 19 miles) west of el-Arish in northern Sinai, the epicenter of a long-running insurgency now led by the extremist Islamic State group.
— with AP
The parents of New York State’s Assistant Attorney General Jenny Michael were attacked with anti-Semitic vandalism.
Michael’s father, former New York City Budget Director Philip Michael, discovered the vandalism yesterday morning on the door to the family’s home in a Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx.
The word “Jew” was spray painted in large white letters on the black front door while the family was sleeping.
A New York Police Department spokesperson told the New York Post that the incident is being investigated as a hate crime.
Despite the fact that several Jewish families live in the neighborhood, Michael’s house was the only one vandalized, Jenny Michael told the Post.
— JTA
Victims’ relatives, survivors and rescuers are observing the 16th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks at ground zero.
The commemoration begins with a moment of silence and tolling bells at 8:46 a.m. It’s the time when a terrorist-piloted plane slammed into the World Trade Center’s north tower.
Then victims’ relatives began reading the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed when four hijacked planes hit the trade center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001.
Republican President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker, is observing a moment of silence at the White House and then participating in an observance at the Pentagon. It’s his first time observing the anniversary as president.
There is also a ceremony at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The UN Security Council will vote on imposing new sanctions on North Korea today at 6 p.m. (2200 GMT), the council presidency says.
The vote was scheduled following a request from the United States to adopt a watered-down draft resolution designed to win support from Russia and China.
— AFP
US President Donald Trump observes a moment of silence at a White House ceremony marking the 16th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The observance, along with another at Ground Zero in New York, was held at 8:46 a.m. (1246 GMT), the moment the World Trade Center in Manhattan was struck by the first of two hijacked airliners.
WATCH: President Trump and FLOTUS lead White House remembrance ceremony to remember those lost on #September11th https://t.co/LorWliju5G
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 11, 2017
In all, four planes were hijacked by Al-Qaeda militants who used them to topple the trade center’s twin towers and hit the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
The attacks, the deadliest ever on US soil, killed 2,997 people, and plunged the United States into a rolling chain of wars against Islamist militants.
The US ambassador to Israel David Friedman lauds the strong friendship between US and Israel during the official memorial service for the victims of the 9/11 terrorists attacks.
“Israel and the United States will always stand together and fight for the total defeat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Friedman says at the 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza in the Arazim Valley outside Jerusalem.
“In the 16 years following the disaster in the US, Israel and its allies have strengthened and flourished, while terrorist organizations such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Hamas continue to weaken,” he says.
Israel, he says, “mourned for America,” in the wake of the attacks, adding that the Jewish state was the only country other than the US to erect a memorial with all of the victims’ names.
Russia’s foreign minister says Saudi Arabia assured him it backs a Moscow-led process of negotiating gradual local ceasefires in Syria, including the establishment of “de-escalation zones.”
Sergey Lavrov is speaking after a meeting with his Jordanian counterpart and a day after talks with Saudi leaders.
Russia and Iran back Syria’s government, while Saudi Arabia supports Syrian rebels. Russia, Iran and Turkey, another rebel backer, have been sponsoring talks in Kazakhstan on gradual ceasefires and de-escalation zones. A new round in the Kazakh capital, Astana, starts later this week.
Lavrov says Saudi Arabia assured him that it “supports this process and will cooperate in terms of creating de-escalation areas and other initiatives under the Astana process.”
Lavrov and his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi, say the Astana approach is the most practical.
— AP
Cuban state news media say 10 people died across the island as it was being battered by Hurricane Irma.
Most of them died in Havana, where chest-deep seawater pushed several blocks into densely populated neighborhoods.
The state media say several of the deaths occurred in partial building collapses. Much of Cuba’s housing stock is deteriorating.
At least 24 people died in other parts of the Caribbean as the hurricane blew through.
— AP
Pope Francis sharply criticizes climate change doubters, saying history will judge those who failed to take the necessary decisions to curb heat-trapping emissions blamed for the warming of the Earth.
Francis is asked about climate change and the spate of hurricanes that have pummeled the US, Mexico and the Caribbean recently as his charter plane left Colombia and flew over some of the devastated areas.
“Those who deny this must go to the scientists and ask them. They speak very clearly,” he says, referring to experts who blame global warming on man-made activities.
Francis says scientists have also clearly charted what needed to be done to reverse course on global warming and said individuals and politicians had a “moral responsibility” to do their part.
“These aren’t opinions pulled out of thin air. They are very clear,” he said. “Then they (leaders) decide and history will judge those decisions.”
For those who have denied climate change, or delayed actions to counter it, he responded with an Old Testament saying: “Man is stupid.”
“When you don’t want to see, you don’t see,” he says.
— AP
A man is seriously injured when his car explodes outside a supermarket in Nesher, near the city of Haifa.
According to reports, police are treating the incident as an attempted assassination of an organized crime figure.
Magen David Adom paramedics and police are at the scene.
The Foreign Ministry welcomes the Azerbaijani president’s decision to release Alexander Lapshin, an Israeli-Russian blogger who was jailed earlier this year for traveling to a separatist-controlled region of the former Soviet republic.
“We are pleased with the pardon granted to Mr. Lapsin by the president of Azerbaijan,” the statement says. “He was accompanied by Israeli embassy representatives throughout his arrest and incarceration.”
“We will be happy to see him in Israel soon,” the ministry adds.
Alexander Lapshin, who holds Russian, Ukrainian and Israeli citizenship, was detained in Belarus last year and extradited to Azerbaijan, where he was charged for his trip to Nagorno-Karabakh via Armenia several years ago. In July, he was sentenced to three years in prison.
Leading his first commemoration of the solemn 9/11 anniversary, US President Donald Trump says that “the living, breathing soul of America wept with grief” for each of the nearly 3,000 lives that were lost on that day 16 years ago.
Addressing an audience at the Pentagon, one of three sites attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, Trump uses the anniversary to sternly warn terrorists that “America cannot be intimidated.” He says those who try are destined to join a long list of vanquished enemies “who dared to test our mettle.”
“The terrorists who attacked us thought they could incite fear and weaken our spirit,” Trump says later at the Pentagon, where he was joined by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “But America cannot be intimidated and those who try will join a long list of vanquished enemies who dared test our mettle.”
He says that when America is united, “no force on earth can break us apart.”
— AP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lands in Buenos Aires for a 10-day trip to Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and the US, marking the first time a sitting Israeli prime minister has made an official visit to Latin America.
Speaking to reporters as his Boeing 767 descended upon Buenos Aires, Netanyahu says he intends to discuss Hezbollah’s regional activities with the Latin American heads of states he will meet this week.
“Hezbollah is operating on the continent in various areas, and this will also be on the agenda,” he says.
“These countries have security issues,” and seek Israel’s expertise in these areas, Netanyahu adds.
— Raphael Ahren
A letter signed by nearly 600 Conservative rabbis and leaders decries the freezing of the Western Wall agreement and a new conversion proposal in the Knesset.
The letter expresses the signers’ “dismay, anger and sense of betrayal” over both incidents which took place in late June and remain unresolved.
The letter addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hand-delivered late last week to Dani Dayan, Consul General of Israel in New York, by Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, CEO of the Rabbinical Assembly.
“Mr. Prime Minister, we are Zionists,” the letter reads. “You must understand, however, that in the 21st century we find it unconscionable that Israel, the Jewish State, is the only democratic state in the world in which not all Jews are recognized or supported equally under the law or in the public square.”
— JTA
French-Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri walks free and is given back his confiscated passports after a military court hearing over his filming of a movie in Israel.
The 54-year-old was briefly detained last night after arriving in Lebanon to premiere his new film “The Insult.” He was released but his passports were confiscated and he was ordered to appear before a military court over his 2013 movie “The Attack,” which he filmed partly in Israel.
After today’s hearing of several hours at a Beirut military court, Doueiri walks free, brandishing his two passports.
“My client was released. No charges have been filed against him,” Doueiri’s lawyer Najib Lyan tells reporters, adding that the case would be “definitively closed.”
However, a judicial source told AFP “it is possible that the issue will be referred to a military court, for the crime of entering an enemy country without prior authorization.”
— AFP
Suspected Russian air strikes kill 19 civilians outside the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, a monitor says, in a second day of deadly strikes in the region.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says two sets of strikes half an hour apart targeted the village of Al-Khrayta, killing eight civilians in tents along the Euphrates River and another 11 in boats on the water.
The deaths came a day after the monitor said Russian air strikes killed 34 civilians in ferries carrying them across the Euphrates southwest of the city.
— AFP
A group that took part in the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia is embarking on a year-long recruitment campaign on college campuses, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Identity Evropa, a group founded last year that seeks to promote “white American culture,” is engaging in a campaign called “Project Siege,” which involves posting fliers and posters on campuses promoting its goals.
The ADL, which tracked a rise last school year in white supremacist activity on college campuses, has documented 12 campuses where the group has advertised in the new school year.
— JTA
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri is released after being questioned for over seven hours in his fifth round of police interrogation, as part of an ongoing corruption investigation into a range of suspicions against him.
Deri is suspected of diverting hundreds of thousands of shekels in state funds to NGOs run by members of his immediate family, as well as suspected tax fraud linked to the sale of apartments to his brother.
He faces possible charges of theft, fraud and tax evasion.
An Austrian company revokes the domain name of an American neo-Nazi website that previously was rejected by internet hosts in the United States.
Monika Pink-Rank, a spokeswoman for Austrian domain registry nic.at, says The Daily Stormer’s domain was removed on Monday after Austrian politicians reported the white supremacist platform’s presence.
The website has been looking for a home since its publisher mocked the counter-protester who was killed during the Confederate monument protests in Charlottesville, Virginia last month.
Publisher Andrew Anglin says four domain registration companies refused to service the site.
Pink-Rank says the Austrian domain was set up at the end of August, after the Charlottesville violence.
— AP
As Israel begins marking one year since the death of former president Shimon Peres this week with memorial events, the respected statesman’s memoir is also being released.
The publication of his memoir “No Room for Small Dreams: Courage, Imagination and the Making of Modern Israel,” is set to be released tomorrow.
Peres had completed work on the book just weeks before his death at 93 on September 28, 2016, according to the publishers.
In the book, Peres maps out his journey from his small Polish village as a child, touching on major events such as the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.
“At the time of this writing, we face new dangers. A decline in tolerance. A rise in nationalism. A world at the height of prosperity that is not widely shared,” Peres writes in the epilogue.
But despite such negative forces, Peres says “I remain optimistic.”
The Trump administration is back at the Supreme Court, asking the justices to continue to allow strict enforcement of a temporary ban on refugees from around the world.
The Justice Department’s high court filing Monday follows an appeals court ruling last week that would allow refugees to enter the United States if a resettlement agency in the US had agreed to take them in. The appellate ruling could take effect as soon as tomorrow and could apply to up to 24,000 refugees.
The administration is not challenging the part of the ruling that applies to a temporary ban on visitors from six mostly Muslim countries. The appeals court ruled that grandparents and cousins of people already in the US can’t be excluded from the country under the travel ban.
— AP
Nearly 7.2 million homes and businesses are without power in multiple states as Tropical Storm Irma moves through the Southeastern United States.
The vast majority were in Florida. The state’s emergency management officials say the storm cut power to more than 6.5 million account holders across the state, as of this afternoon.
Eric Silagy, the CEO of Florida Power & Light, says Irma has caused the most widespread damage in the company’s history. It affected all 35 counties in the utility’s territory, which is most of the state’s Atlantic coast and the Gulf coast south of Tampa. The most extensive damage is likely in the Naples area, but a full assessment was ongoing. He says 19,500 electric workers have been deployed in the restoration effort.
Still, he says, it will take days for many people to be restored and, in some cases, where the damage is extensive, weeks.
Meanwhile, Duke Energy reports this morning that more than 860,000 of the homes and businesses it serves in Florida are without power.
Georgia reports more than 570,000 homes and businesses without electricity, and there are 80,000 in South Carolina.
— AP
The University of California Berkeley is gearing up for a visit by conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro by tightening campus security and offering counseling services for students.
Shapiro, a former Breitbart News editor, who currently works as a political commentator, author, radio talk show host and lawyer, is scheduled to speak on the UC Berkeley campus on September 14 on the topic “Campus Thuggery.” The event is hosted by the Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation.
Several university buildings surrounding Zellerbach Hall, where Shapiro’s appearance is to be held, will be closed off the afternoon of the speech and those arriving to attend the speech will have to go through security barriers and show their tickets for the event, according to a statement posted on the university’s website by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Alivisatos.
There also will be an “increased and highly visible police presence,” according to the statement.
“Some may wish to attend the event and hear the speaker to form their own views. Others may wish to stay away. Some may wish to protest. All activities can be done peacefully and with respect. If you choose to protest, please seek ways to protest peacefully and safely while observing rules related to the student code of conduct and our Principles of Community. If events escalate around you, please strongly consider leaving,” the provost’s statement says.
— JTA
Dozens of Arab citizens of Israel are demonstrating outside the embassy of Myanmar in Tel Aviv to protest the treatment of Rohingya Muslims by the Rangoon authorities.
The protest was organized by the Islamic Movement in Israel.
Protest leader Ibrahim Sarsour says the crowd gathered to condemn what he called “atrocities” committed by the Myanmar government.
“It’s the responsibility of the international community to move, to act, immediately to stop the bloodshed,” he says. “I think it is a crime against humanity.”
The UN refugee agency has reported that 270,000 people have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in the last three weeks. It said there were reports, backed by satellite imagery, of “security forces and local militia burning Rohingya villages” and committing extrajudicial killings.
In a thinly veiled threat directed at Syria, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warns any future provocation against Israel from its northern neighbors would end “very badly” for them.
“I strongly suggest to our neighbors from the north not to try and provoke or threaten us,” he says at a ceremony honoring IDF soldiers from the Bedouin community.
“I don’t suggest they enter into a confrontation with Israel, it will end badly for them, very badly,” the minister says.
A trial of four doctors and a Greek pizzeria owner accused of running an illegal organ trafficking ring in Costa Rica for wealthy foreigners begins in the capital San Jose.
The five allegedly sought out poor people willing to sell their kidneys for between $6,000 and $20,000, mostly to Israelis but also to European clients willing to pay as much as $100,000 each.
Surgeries to remove the organs were allegedly carried out in some of the many private clinics in Costa Rica that each year attract thousands of foreigners for cheap medical tourism.
The trial is expected to run through November 30, with a bench of three judges deciding the verdict.
— AFP
Prime Minister Benjamin Natenyahu says Israel shares the pain of the United States as it commemorates the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“We share the pain, we know the pain, we’ve felt it,” he says in a video posted to his Facebook page shortly after landing in Buenos Aries.
“We share the commitment to fight this evil and wipe terrorism from the face of the earth,” Netanyahu says.
We remember 9/11.We share the pain of our American friends.We share your commitment to wipe terrorism from the face of the earth.🇮🇱🇺🇸
Posted by Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו on pirmdiena, 2017. gada 11. septembris
