ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 369
The Times of Israel liveblogged Thursday’s events as they unfolded.
A protest in support of the government’s judicial overhaul in Jerusalem wraps up without incident.
Police reopen roads around the protest site to traffic, several hours after the rally began.
Estimates put the number of attendees at the rally at around 10,000.
Minister for the Advancement of Women May Golan says at a protest in support of the government’s judicial overhaul that she’ll oppose the High Court if it strikes down coalition legislation.
“We won’t let them, even if we need to fight for another 10 years, we won’t let them,” says the firebrand Likud lawmaker.
“As long as I’m in the government and the Knesset I won’t let them steal the country — and that’s what they want to do,” Golan says. “We’ll fight to pass the reforms.”
An Israeli woman was killed in a bicycle accident in Cyprus, the Foreign Ministry says.
The woman, in her 50s, fell while mountain biking near Larnaca, the ministry says.
The Ministry says the consul in Cyprus is dealing with the incident.
The woman is not immediately identified.
Addressing a pro-government rally outside the Supreme Court, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warns Chief Justice Esther Hayur not to dare overturn judicial overhaul legislation.
“Don’t you dare invalidate a Basic Law, the responsibility is on you,” the far-right minister says.
“Nullifying a Basic Law is a deviation from all your authority and will be the end of Israeli democracy,” he says.
The law, an amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary, prohibits the court from reviewing government and ministerial decisions through the judicial reasonableness standard.
The Supreme Court has never struck down changes to a Basic Law, though never has any Basic Law legislation caused such uproar and division within the public as this bill.
Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, the Mossad spy agency publishes a photo of one of its handlers together with the agent code-named “the Angel,” who gave the spy agency a precise warning that war was about to break out.
The agency also publishes a transcript of the conversation between Mossad chief Zvi Zamir and the agent, later revealed to be Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser.
The day before the war broke out Marwan warned Zamir that “There is a 99% chance that the war will start tomorrow… it will start simultaneously on both fronts, the Egyptian and the Syrian.”
Marwan told Zamir that the Egyptians planned to launch a massive artillery barrage and “move almost the entire army across the Suez Canal.”
He also told him that the Syrians “planned to capture the Golan Heights.”
Despite the warnings, the political and military leaders largely ignored the warnings and the attack caught Israel by surprise.
On June 27, 2007, Marwan plunged to his death from the fourth-floor balcony of an upscale London apartment building. Whether he fell or was pushed has never been definitively established.
Some 10,000 pro-government demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem ahead of the petition on the judicial overhaul legislation.
The numbers are lower than at previous pro-government demonstrations and far lower than the mass anti-overhaul rallies held in Tel Aviv every week.
Minister of National Missions Orit Strock addresses the crowd, apologizing to them for the government not managing to push through the reform.
“You are not supposed to be here, you are supposed to be sitting at home. But there are people here who do not know how to accept the decision of the majority. They shout democracy, but actually demand a dictatorship,” she says.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with officials from Moody’s Investors Service, telling the ratings agency that the judicial overhaul will only pass with a national consensus, Channel 12 reports.
Netanyahu is trying to ease international financial jitters over the judicial overhaul as the shekel continues to drop in relation to the US dollar.
Netanyahu reportedly told senior Moody’s officials that legislation will only pass with broad agreement.
Netanyahu has recently called for direct talks with the opposition, who remain skeptical that the prime minister can deliver a compromise while his hard-line coalition partners dig their heels in over the reforms.
Netanyahu tells Moody’s that he will soon announce his future plans for the overhaul package. So far only one element has passed, the reasonableness law that limits the court’s oversite over the Knesset.
He also tells Moody’s that there will not be a government majority on the judicial selection panel, a key demand of Justice Minister Yariv Levin.
Netanyahu also reportedly warned Moody’s that mass protests against his government will not stop even if there is a negotiated deal.
The prime minister also told the ratings agency that he was cautiously optimistic about a breakthrough in a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia.
The credit rating agency in July warned about “negative consequences” and “significant risk” for Israel’s economy and security situation following the passage of the first bill of the government’s contested judicial overhaul.
Back in April, Moody’s lowered Israel’s credit outlook from “positive” to “stable,” citing a “deterioration of Israel’s governance” and upheaval over the government’s bid to dramatically overhaul the judiciary.
The government is weighing delaying elections in 12 Arab local councils amid fears that organized crime gangs could try and take control, Channel 12 reports.
The unprecedented step was discussed at a meeting of the ministerial committee aimed at combating the spiraling crime in the Arab community after a series of killings of local politicians.
According to the report, the fears were raised by the Shin Bet and the police.
The Attorney General asked for further information to formulate a response to the proposal, the report said. It also noted that several ministers asked for a list of local councils that would be affected, but police chief Kobi Shabtai declined to respond.
The committee recently tasked the Shin Bet security service with assisting police operations in combating some crime in the Arab community, specifically in all matters related to safeguarding the municipal elections.
The Shin Bet has identified 15 to 20 Arab regional councils where there are threats to candidates, voters or public officials from crime families, the Kan public broadcaster reported at the time.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warns terror groups “not to test” Israel during the upcoming Jewish holiday season, and promises a “crushing” response if they launch attacks.
“We are in a complex security period in all the areas, and especially in [the West Bank] and surrounding Jerusalem,” Gallant says during an assessment with senior military and defense officials.
“In order to make sure that the citizens of Israel will get through the holiday season safely, the defense establishment is being widely deployed, in intelligence, in the protection of the roads and settlements, and in operations to foil terror operatives and those who send them,” he says.
Gallant tells the officials that “during this period, there will be those who will try to harm us under the auspices of the holidays.”
“Against the terror elements, we will take defensive actions, and if an offensive is required, we will do so in a crushing manner,” Gallant says.
“I suggest to all the terror elements, in the [West Bank], in Gaza, in Lebanon, or anywhere else, don’t test us,” he adds.
Hundreds of pro-overhaul demonstrators begin gathering in Jerusalem for a protest outside the Supreme Court in support of the government’s efforts to shift power away from the judiciary.
Many are carrying signs with pictures of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, Chief Justice Esther Hayut, and former prime minister Ehud Barak with a caption saying “the ruling elite.”
Several protesters are dressed as bananas, an apparent attempt to portray the country as a banana republic where the government has no say.
Several protesters can be seen waving the yellow and black flag of the banned racist Kach movement.
Signs are put up outside the Supreme Court reading “The Supreme Court won’t decide over the [will of the] people.”
The shekel falls to the lowest level in more than three years as hopes for a judicial overhaul compromise to prevent a constitutional crisis dissipate and amid growing tensions ahead of a high-profile High Court of Justice hearing next week.
The shekel depreciates more than 1% today to around 3.85 against the US dollar, trading around the weakest since March 2020.
Political uncertainty around the government’s contentious judicial overhaul has seen the currency drop more than 9% against the greenback since the start of the year.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s benchmark TA-125 index and the TA-35 index of blue-chip companies declined 0.7%, while the TA index of the five largest banks was down 1.4%.
Local analysts and economists linked the sharp depreciation of the local currency over the past day to a combination of two factors: heightened domestic political turmoil and a decline in world stock indexes.
Amid tensions over the upcoming Uman pilgrimage and Israeli ties with Russia, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speak by phone.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, they discuss Israeli aid to Ukraine, and the civil alert system Israel is building for Ukraine.
Netanyahu also brings up the importance of ensuring that Jewish worshippers heading to Uman can reach the city, despite official Israeli travel warnings against going to the country during the ongoing war.
An organizer of the mass pro-overhaul rally set for Jerusalem tonight warns the Supreme Court of “chaos” if it overturns the reasonableness law.
“Right-wingers, let’s stop using the term ‘constitutuonal crisis.’ There won’t be a crisis because in a democratic country, the government and Knesset representing the people have the final word,” writes Berele Crombie on X.
“If the Supreme Court wants chaos it will get chaos,” he says.
With tensions fraying ahead of a series of high-profile High Court of Justice hearings on whether to nullify controversial laws passed by the coalition, masses of right-wing supporters of the current government’s judicial overhaul were set to rally in Jerusalem this evening and urge the top court not to intervene.
Dubbed the “Liberty Demonstration” by its organizers, the protest will argue that the country’s top judges “don’t have the authority to nullify the people’s choice” and will call on them not to “drag the state into a constitutional crisis.”
Days after Elon Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League for billions of dollars and amplified a hashtag spread by white supremacists, the ADL’s CEO praises Musk’s business acumen but calls his behavior “frustrating” and said he was spreading “age-old tropes” around blaming Jews for antisemitism.
“I’ve always tried to treat Elon and everyone at the company with respect and forthright manner and a constructive approach. I would do that again,” Greenblatt tells the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“The truth is that he has been, Elon Musk, a great innovator in some respects, in many respects in his business pursuits,” Greenblatt says. “That’s why it’s all the more frustrating to see him engaging online with users who are espousing antisemitism and hate.”
Greenblatt’s comments came some 36 hours after Musk fired off a stream of posts on X, the social media platform he owns and renamed from Twitter, in which he accused the ADL of trying to tank the platform by encouraging an ad boycott against it.
The High Court of Justice issues a temporary injunction against the Shas-run Interior Ministry’s food stamp program.
The ruling says that the injunction comes due to the fact that once rolled out, the program can’t be undone and orders the ministry to wait until the end of the legal proceedings.
The ministry had hoped to start issuing the stamps ahead of the Jewish New Year which starts next Friday evening.
The court notes that the injunction does not indicate any prior determination for or against the program.
The program is being challenged for appearing to prioritize Haredi families at the expense of others battling food insecurity.
Families with large numbers of children will be eligible to receive vouchers for NIS 2,400 ($639) per month, while some 12,000 Holocaust survivors and single parents will be left behind.
The program has long been associated with Shas leader Aryeh Deri, who made it a central part of his party’s campaign ahead of the November 2022 Knesset elections.
An Israeli organization opens a study room at a Ukrainian children’s hospital, designed to help them remain up-to-date with their studies.
SASA Setton, which provides teaching methods for 140,000 children in Israeli hospitals every year, applied their experience to Odesa Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital, which treats some 700 children daily.
The study room contains computers, tablets, games, and the company’s educational software translated into Ukrainian.
“Throughout the establishment of this educational space, we have encountered bombings, power outages, and numerous alarms, but it was essential for us not to give up on this vital project,” Sonia Gomes de Mesquita, deputy chair of SASA Setton.
The Mossad announces it is publishing a book to mark 50 years since the Yom Kippur War that reveals intelligence it gathered in the build-up to the surprise attack on Israel.
The name of the book, as yet unrevealed, is taken from a sentence said by Prime Minister Golda Meir to then-Mossad chief Zvi Zamir: “When the time comes to tell what you did, you and your friends will get a prize.”
The book will detail how the Mossad uncovered much of Egypt’s plan for a surprise attack ahead of the war. The military and political echelons largely ignored the warnings until it was too late.
Barnea also spoke about the agent known as “the Angel” who gave Israel advanced warning of the attack.
Barnea denied widespread reports that the agent, since identified as Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser, was a double agent.
“These claims were intensively checked before the war by a joint IDF-Mossad team and again after the war,” Barnea says.
“Findings repeated themselves, the Angel was an important and strategic agent. Those who don’t understand HUMINT have a hard time understanding the nuances of an agent and his handler,” he says, referring to human intelligence.
On June 27, 2007, Marwan plunged to his death from the fourth-floor balcony of an upscale London apartment building. Whether he fell or was pushed has never been definitively established.
Mossad chief David Barnea says Israel has learned it cannot ignore existential threats as the spy agency marks 50 years since the Yom Kippur War.
“We can’t stop dealing with the existential threats to the State of Israel, we must not underestimate the enemy and his capabilities, we must not exaggerate the support of our allies in times of crisis, we must not fall prey to existing concepts,” Barnea says at a ceremony with retired agents who served during the 1973 war.
“We must act to assert our deterrent power, we must strive for normalization. A country that despises the pursuit of peace is doomed to be drawn into war,” Barnea says.
US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt slams Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s “hateful, antisemitic remarks” at a recent Fatah meeting during which he suggested that Hitler orchestrated the massacre of Jews during the Holocaust because of their “social role” as moneylenders.
“The speech maligned the Jewish people, distorted the Holocaust, and misrepresented the tragic exodus of Jews from Arab countries,” Lipstadt tweets.
“I condemn these statements and urge an immediate apology,” she adds.
A British woman who has accused five Israelis of raping her in Cyprus has identified four of them in a police lineup, Channel 13 reports.
In addition, police have take sheets and other items from the room for DNA analysis.
It was announced on Monday that five men aged 19 and 20 from the northern town of Majd al-Krum were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the woman’s gang rape.
Nir Yaslovitzh, a lawyer representing two of the suspects, conceded that they had sex with the woman, but tells Channel 13 “the issue of consent will become clear during the investigation.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issues a statement denying that he secretly summoned candidates for police chief for a meeting.
The denial comes after the Ynet news site reports that Netanyahu preempted National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir in vetting candidates.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office calls the Ynet report “a complete fabrication.”
“The prime minister has not and will not meet any candidates to be police commissioner,” the statement says. “It’s unfortunate that the need to create false reports trumps the will to tell the public the truth.”
France joins in the growing condemnation of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s August 26 speech on the Holocaust and the origin of Ashkenazi Jews, calling it “clearly unacceptable.”
France’s Embassy states that it “unequivocally strongly condemns antisemitism and the denial of the Holocaust in all its forms, as well as its determination to fight tirelessly against these scourges.”
Ukraine blasts Israel for yesterday’s film deal with Russia, accusing Jerusalem of “collaboration” and aiding Moscow in spreading its propaganda.
“We no longer know how to comment,” says Ukraine’s embassy in a statement.
“On the very same day when a Russian rocket struck a crowded market in Donbas area of Ukraine, once again killing and injuring dozens of innocent civilians, the Israeli Government signed a cooperation agreement in the field of cinema with the Russian propaganda perpetrators,” it says.
“Israel is collaborating with this ruthless country, well known for its cinematic endeavors aimed at spreading war propaganda,” continues the Ukrainian statement.
“While the international community isolates Russia to demonstrate that its actions are unacceptable to civilized society, it looks like Israel is offering additional platforms to the aggressive federation for the dissemination of their toxic ideas.”
Over a thousand Syrian refugees each week fleeing to Lebanon from their country’s worsening economic and financial conditions “could create harsh imbalances” in the small Mediterranean nation, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati warns.
Over the past months, thousands of Syrian citizens made it to Lebanon through illegal crossing points seeking a better life. But Lebanon is going through its own four-year meltdown, with a drowning economy pinning its hopes on tourism and crumbling infrastructure where electricity and water cuts are widespread.
The Lebanese army says in a statement that it prevented 1,200 Syrians from crossing into Lebanon this week alone. It said another 1,100 Syrians were prevented from reaching Lebanon the previous week.
Speaking at the start of a Cabinet meeting in Beirut, Mikati says what is worrying about the influx in refugees is that most of them are young men and women.
“That threatens our entity’s independence and could create harsh imbalances that could affect Lebanon’s demographic balance,” Mikati says.
Israeli tourists trapped in the massive flooding in Greece are pleading for help.
Michal Shalem, who is traveling on the Pelion peninsula in eastern Greece, tells Channel 12 that her family is trapped without electricity and can’t travel because roads have washed away.
“We hoped that the rains would subside and we could begin moving toward Athens, but this morning another massive storm hit,” she says.
Shalem said they were running out of food and stores were closed.
“The Foreign Ministry told us to ask our neighbors for food,” she says.
Noam Cohen tells Channel 12 that her family, also vacationing in Pelion, managed to get to the nearby city of Volos, but is now trapped in a hotel.
“We don’t have anywhere to buy bread or water or winter clothes. When will this end?” she says.
Greek emergency services say they are trying to rescue potentially dozens of people from villages in a central region that has seen more rain in 24 hours than it normally sees in a year.
Fierce storms battered Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria earlier this week, following a period of extreme heat and devastating wildfires.
AFP contributed to this report
A Jerusalem court extends the remand of a Palestinian teenager suspected of carrying out a terror stabbing attack near Jerusalem’s Old City yesterday.
The 17-year-old from East Jerusalem will be held for another seven days, until September 13.
The terrorist attacked people with a cleaver on a promenade near the Jaffa Gate entrance to the Old City, seriously wounding an Israeli man and lightly hurting a tourist.
He was detained by officers after tossing the knife and attempting to flee the scene.
Police say officers also detained a friend of the assailant, also 17, from East Jerusalem, on suspicion that he knew of his intentions to carry out the attack and did not report it to authorities.
The second suspect’s remand is also extended by the court, by six days.
Researchers have discovered new documentation that substantiates reports that Catholic convents and monasteries in Rome sheltered Jews during World War II, providing names of at least 3,200 Jews whose identities have been corroborated by the city’s Jewish community, officials say.
Researchers from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust research institute and Rome’s Jewish community release the findings at an academic conference today held at the Museum of the Shoah, part of Rome’s main synagogue.
The documentation doesn’t appear to shed any new light on the role of pope Pius XII during the Nazi occupation of Rome. Historians have long debated Pius’s legacy, with supporters insisting he used quiet diplomacy to save Jewish lives and critics saying he remained silent as Roman Jews were rounded up and deported from the Vatican’s backyard.
Rather, the new documentation provides names and addresses of people who were sheltered in Catholic institutions during the war, which had only previously been reported in vague terms and numbers by Italy’s preeminent historian of the period, Renzo de Felice, in a 1961 book, according to a joint statement from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Yad Vashem and Rome’s Jewish Community.
The documentation was discovered in the archives of the Biblical Institute, which is affiliated with the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University. It lists more than 4,300 people who were sheltered in the properties of 100 women’s and 55 men’s religious orders. Of those, 3,600 are identified by name, and research in the archives of Rome’s Jewish community “indicates that 3,200 certainly were Jews,” the statement says.
More than 800 people have been rescued over the past two days from floods in Greece, the fire department says, after severe rainstorms turned streets into raging torrents, hurling cars into the sea and washing away roads.
The rainstorms have also hit neighboring Bulgaria and Turkey, leaving 14 people dead in the three countries, including three people in Greece.
Fire department spokesperson Vasilis Vathrakogiannis says swift water rescue specialists and divers from the department’s disaster response units, as well as the army, were participating in rescue efforts and were trying to reach remote areas despite roads having been washed away.
The flooding follows on the heels of devastating wildfires that destroyed vast tracts of forest and farmland, burned homes and left more than 20 people dead.
The High Court rejects a petition filed by Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee MK Simcha Rothman seeking to have Chief Justice Esther Hayut barred from the panel hearing petitions against the government’s “reasonableness” law on the basis that she is biased on the issue.
Rothman, of the far-right Religious Zionism party, based his request Monday on a speech given by Hayut in January in which she strongly criticized all aspects of the judicial overhaul agenda presented by Justice Minister Yariv Levin earlier that month, including the plan to limit the High Court’s use of the reasonableness standard.
However, Justice Uzi Vogelman ruled that the contents of Hayut’s speech did not directly relate to the issues raised in the petition against the reasonableness law.
The reasonableness law, an amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary, is the only part of the government’s broad judicial overhaul program to have been passed so far. It prohibits the High Court from using the reasonableness standard to annul governmental and ministerial decisions and actions on the basis that they are unreasonable.
The hearing on petitions against the reasonableness law is scheduled for September 12.
