Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s developments as they unfolded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Monday denies alleged French fraudster Arnaud Mimran gave the premier €1 million for his election campaign.
The prime minister’s office says when Netanyahu was a private citizen, Mimran gave him $40,000 toward Israel advocacy.
“The claim that Arnaud Mimran donated one million euro to Mr. Netanyahu’s election campaign is a baseless lie. There was no Mimran donation to Netanyahu’s election campaign,” a statement says. “In August 2001, when Mr. Netanyahu was a private citizen, Mimran donated $40,000 to Mr. Netanyahu’s fund for public service, which included media appearances and hasbara [advocacy] efforts abroad on behalf of the state of Israel, and was done in accordance with the law.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset, May 30, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The lawyer for an Egyptian hijacker says the flight crew of the EgyptAir plane had testified that the man threatened to blow up the aircraft because he was against the Egyptian government.
Robertos Brahimis tells a Cypriot court Monday that both the pilot and the co-pilot had testified in documents supporting Egypt’s request to extradite Seif Eddin Mustafa from Cyprus that he said aboard the Airbus A320 last March that he hijacked the aircraft because he “opposed the Egyptian government’s policies.”
Brahimis says a Cyprus-Egypt treaty prohibits a suspect’s extradition on political grounds. But prosecution witness Yioulika Hadjiprodromou says Egypt’s extradition request has nothing to do with his politics and repeats that Egypt has given assurances that Mustafa will receive a fair trial and have his rights protected.
— AP
Illustrative image of an EgyptAir Airbus A320 on the tarmac at Cairo airport, December 10, 2014 image. Egyptian aviation officials said that an EgyptAir flight travelling from Paris to Cairo had crashed, May 19, 2016. (AirTeamImages via AP)
A fire breaks out in Lachish in southern Israel.
Israeli soldiers at a nearby army base are evacuated as firefighters combat the blaze, Israel Radio reports.
Actor, economist and former Republican presidential speechwriter Ben Stein slams Donald Trump’s economic knowledge.
Stein tells The Guardian newspaper that he doesn’t think the GOP presidential front-runner “knows a god damn thing about economics.” He says Trump’s stance against free trade could lead to a trade war. He says Trump “is not a great businessman” and even if he was, “that doesn’t mean he would be a great steward of the US economy.”
After taking a poke at Trump, Stein said he thinks presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “knows something” about economics, but that her rival Bernie Sanders is “willfully ignorant.”
The 71-year-old Stein was a speechwriter for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford before moving on to acting. He’s best known for his role as a monotone teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
— AP
Ben Stein is interviewed in 2007 in New York. (AP/Bebeto Matthews, File)
Zionist Union MK Nahman Shai says the efforts to join the coalition have not concluded, and if the party receives a viable offer, it will consider it.
“If we receive an offer to join the government, we will discuss it,” he tells the Knesset Channel. “The role of the party leader is to examine the feasibility of entering the government. It seems Herzog has not yet exhausted this examination.”
Labor Party MK Nachman Shai, February 3, 2013 (photo credit: Flash90)
The left-wing B’Tselem human rights organization claims the second Palestinian assailant who attacked two soldiers in Hebron on March 24 was also “executed” by an IDF soldier, potentially adding yet another controversial aspect to an already divisive case.
In March, Abed al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif and Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi attacked two Israeli soldiers with knives in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of the West Bank city, wounding one of them.
The IDF has claimed al-Qasrawi died as a result of gunshots fired by a soldier during the attack, while al-Sharif was seriously injured.
A short while later, Sgt. Elor Azaria arrived on the scene and nearly 15 minutes after the initial attack, the Kfir Brigade soldier was filmed shooting al-Sharif in the head, killing him.
Azaria’s case has dominated headlines since March and divided the country.
A wounded assailant lying some distance from a knife in Hebron on March 24, 2016 (Channel 2 screenshot)
Local residents, however, now claim al-Qasrawi was only wounded in the attack and after he was already incapacitated, a soldier “shot him in the “head or neck twice from point-blank range.”
According to B’Tselem, the delay in releasing this information was the result of the IDF’s 8-month closure on the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, which kept the organization’s investigators from interviewing the witnesses.
As the army removed those restrictions, the B’Tselem employee could interview the two witnesses who are claiming al-Qasrawi was “executed.”
The Tel Rumeida neighborhood is under surveillance by security cameras, meaning this accusation should be relatively easy to prove or disprove.
An IDF spokesperson tells The Times of Israel they are looking into the new allegation.
— Judah Ari Gross
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) urges his coalition partner Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Jewish Home party, to “calm down.”
Bennett castigated Netanyahu on Sunday, accusing him of talking out of both sides of his mouth about the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“I call on my good friend Naftali Bennett — calm down. I refer those who can’t contain themselves to the doctor who extended my short fuse,” says Liberman, reiterating a joke he made upon entering the coalition.
Liberman says he is in favor of a “wide coalition, from wall to wall” in light of Israel’s “regional challenges.”
He says he won’t be giving interviews for several months as he focuses on learning the ropes at the Defense Ministry.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office hits back Monday at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a blistering row over a German parliamentary vote declaring the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against Armenians.
Erdogan has angrily condemned last week’s vote on the World War I massacres, charging that the 11 German MPs with Turkish roots who backed it supported “terrorism” by the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), and demanding “blood tests” to see “what kind of Turks they are.”
Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert on Monday says that while Berlin also considers the PKK a terrorist group, “to associate individual members of parliament with terrorism is utterly incomprehensible to us.”
“The resolution was a political initiative that emerged from the midst of the Bundestag, which is a democratically elected, independent organ under our constitution,” Seibert tells a regular press conference.
“The Bundestag reached a sovereign decision. That must be respected,” Seibert says, adding that this was the message Merkel had given to the Turkish president.
— AFP
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, talks through an interpreter to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, during the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on May 23, 2016. (Ozan Kose/Pool Photo via AP)
The High Court rules that a restaurant cannot present itself as kosher unless it has a certificate from the Chief Rabbinate.
The court decision is a blow to alternative kashrut organizations that in recent years have offered kosher certificates in lieu of the rabbinate and effectively upholds the rabbinate’s monopoly on the matter.
Illustrative photo of a kosher food shop. (Moshe Shai/FLASH90)
Seventeen civilians including eight children were killed on Monday, the first day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, in airstrikes on a market in eastern Syria, a monitor says.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the strikes on Al-Shaara, a town held by the Islamic State group in Deir Ezzor province, are suspected to have been carried out by either Russian or Syrian government planes.
— AFP
The IDF will activate an air raid siren in Tel Aviv tomorrow as part of an emergency preparedness exercise, the army says.
At 10:10 a.m., the siren will be heard in southern Tel Aviv.
At 10:20 a.m., it will be heard in northern Tel Aviv.
At 10:30 a.m., it will be heard in eastern Tel Aviv.
And at 10:40 a.m., it will be heard in central Tel Aviv.
In the case of an actual emergency, the siren will be activated twice.
The IDF will also send out a notification through its Home Front Command mobile phone application.
There will also be announcements made on 102 FM and 103 FM.
“The IDF spokesperson stresses that this test was planned ahead of time as part of its 2016 exercise plan and it is meant to test the alert systems,” the army says in a statement.
— Judah Ari Gross
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will attend the public memorial service for boxing legend Muhammad Ali on Friday in Louisville, a spokesman for Ali’s family says Monday.
Spokesman Bob Gunnell makes the announcement as he unveils details of the ceremonies to take place in Ali’s hometown in the southern US state of Kentucky, where his coffin will be paraded through the streets before the public funeral.
In Turkey, a presidential source tells AFP: “We confirm that the president will travel to Louisville, Kentucky, to attend boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s funeral. He leaves Wednesday evening.”
— AFP
Donald Trump says Monday it was “inappropriate” for Newt Gingrich to demand he drop the subject of an American judge’s ethnicity and start acting like “a potential leader of the United States.” But Trump did not comment on the other Republican leaders’ unanimous call for him to lay off the jurist, a sign that the GOP presidential candidate doesn’t want to blow up the fragile truce he has struck with them.
Trump insists that he’s only defending himself against relentless questions about lawsuits against Trump University. US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, Trump says, cannot be impartial in the lawsuits against Trump University because his parents were born in Mexico and Trump wants to build a wall along the border.
“You have to respond,” Trump says on Fox News. “All I’m trying to do is figure out why I’m being treated so unfairly by a judge.”
Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Rimrock Auto Arena, in Billings, Montana, May 26, 2016 (AP/Brennan Linsley)
A day earlier, Gingrich said Trump’s focus on Curiel’s ethnic background was “inexcusable” and Trump’s “worst mistake.” He was one of several Republicans who publicly demanded that the presumptive GOP candidate move on and unite the party. Across the Sunday talk shows, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he “couldn’t disagree more” with Trump’s statements about Curiel’s impartiality, adding that “we’re all behind him now” — an implicit warning that such unity might not be the case for long.
— AP
The Palestinian Health Ministry says a man wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers at a flashpoint prayer site in the West Bank has died of his wounds.
It says Jamal Dweikat, 20, succumbed to his wounds on Monday.
The 20-year-old was among a group of Palestinians who threw stones at Jewish worshippers at the Joseph’s Tomb, in the northern West Bank city of Nablus. He was shot in the ensuing clashes.
Some Jews believe the biblical Joseph is buried in the tomb, while Muslims say a local sheikh is buried there.
— AP
Egypt imposes a 15-day ban on sport fishing and offshore swimming near a popular Red Sea destination where a shark attack took place last weekend.
Environment Ministry officials Mohamed Salem and Beily Hatab say Monday the attack was likely caused by the combination of fishing and swimming in the same spot.
The shark attack happened off Ain Sokhna, a popular holiday destination 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of the Egyptian capital, Cairo. The two officials, who are directly involved in investigating the attack, said the Egyptian man who was bitten by a shark was swimming after bait was thrown nearby.
Hotels in the area were instructed to hire watchmen for their beaches.
Shark attacks are rare in Egypt.
— AP
The IDF denies allegations made by B’Tselem that it “executed” a second Palestinian assailant in Hebron in March, saying the shooting was necessary to “eliminate the threat” of the assailant mid-attack.
“The claims by the B’Tselem organization are inconsistent with the findings of the operational investigation and conflict with the information the IDF has about this incident,” the army says in a statement.
“The shots fired at the terrorist were carried out in order to eliminate the threat while he was attacking the soldiers with a knife,” the IDF says.
— Judah Ari Gross
Egypt’s statistics authority says the population has grown by 1 million over the last six months, reaching 91 million.
The statement issued by authorities on Sunday warns that the runaway population growth is the main obstacle to improving the standard of living. More than a quarter of the population lives in poverty, according to the 2013 census.
Egypt’s fertility rate declined throughout the 1980s and 1990s as the government promoted family planning initiatives, but began rising again after 2007, according to World Bank statistics.
The Arab world’s most populous country has been struggling to revive its economy after the years of unrest that followed the 2011 uprising.
— AP
South Africa on Monday sought to allay fears after Washington warned Americans of a possibly imminent terror attack by Islamic extremists in the country’s major cities.
“We remain a strong and stable democratic country and there is no immediate danger,” State Security Minister David Mahlobo says in a statement.
The United States on Saturday said it had received information that terrorist groups were planning to carry out attacks in South Africa during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The warning said attacks may target sites frequented by US citizens, including high-end shopping areas and malls in the economic hubs of Johannesburg and Cape Town, which are popular with tourists.
— AFP
The Norwegian Foreign Ministry responds to the Israeli arrest of an embassy driver found with 10 kilos of antiquities:
“The request to search the diplomatic vehicle, which enjoys diplomatic immunity, was presented to the Norwegian Embassy in Israel by the Chief of Protocol of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Embassy cooperated with the Israeli authorities and allowed the search under certain conditions, in line with established international practice.”
Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani tells Lebanese media that Saudi Arabia shared intelligence with Israel in 2006, during the Second Lebanon War.
Larijani also tells Al-Mayadeen that the Saudis shirked their responsibilities toward the Palestinians during the 22-day war in Gaza — a likely reference to the 2009 Operation Cast Lead — by blaming the Iranians for arming Hamas.
Iran and Saudi Arabia cut ties earlier this year.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. (screen capture: Youtube/NDTV)
The new custodian of the Catholic Church’s properties in the Holy Land has taken office in Jerusalem.
Italian Franciscan priest Rev. Francesco Patton replaces Pierbattista Pizzaballa in a ceremony on Monday. Several hundred people attend the festivities.
A procession of priests, nuns and other clergy welcomed Patton, 52, at Jaffa Gate, a main entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City, home to key holy sites sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims.
From there they walked together with a troupe of Palestinian Catholic boy scouts through the narrow winding cobblestone streets of the ancient city, across the Christian quarter to the Saint Savior monastery.
Another ceremony will be held on Tuesday at the Church of Holy Sepulchre, the site where tradition holds that Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.
— AP
Playwright Peter Shaffer, whose durable, award-winning hits included “Equus” and “Amadeus,” has died at the age of 90.
Shaffer’s agent, Rupert Lord, says Shaffer died Monday while on a visit to southwest Ireland with friends and family.
Shaffer’s 18 plays included “Amadeus,” a drama about the rivalry between Mozart and less-talented composer Salieri that was turned into an Academy Award-winning film in 1984. The play is to be revived this fall at Britain’s National Theatre, with which Shaffer had a long association.
His 1973 play “Equus,” about a stable boy who inexplicably blinds a horse, was revived in 2007 as the stage debut for “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe.
Shaffer, who was Jewish, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001 and inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2007.
— AP, Times of Israel staff
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lands in Moscow, where he is welcomed by an entourage playing the national anthems, waving flags.
— Raphael Ahren
.@IsraeliPM just arrived in Moscow. The Russians sure know how to welcome him. Flags waving, anthems playing. pic.twitter.com/Wx8ivsrz45
— Raphael Ahren (@RaphaelAhren) June 6, 2016
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reinstates Akram Rajoub as governor of Nablus, after firing him from the position a little over a month ago.
Palestinian media reports that the decision by Abbas to remove Rajoub from his position in late April was likely punishment for the governor’s criticism of the PA on social media.
Another theory espoused by Palestinian media was that Rajoub was punished for snubbing the ancient Samaritan community that lives on Mount Gerizim, on the southern outskirts of Nablus, by abruptly leaving their Passover seder service due to the arrival of Israeli settlers.
The decision to reinstate Rajoub to his position comes as the month of Ramadan begins, and is likely a gesture made in the holiday spirit.
— Dov Lieber
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a press conference in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, January 6, 2016 (AP/Majdi Mohammed, File)
A team of experts has begun the first renovations in over 200 years at the site where Christians believe Jesus was buried.
The work that began Monday is the first of its kind since 1810, and was made possible by a rare accord among Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Armenians, who are responsible for maintaining separate sections of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and who jealously guard their domains. In 2008, an argument between Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks erupted into a brawl.
This time, the clergymen have put aside their differences — a reflection of the dire need for the repairs. Last year, Israeli police briefly shut down the building after antiquities experts deemed it unsafe, prompting the Christian denominations to join forces.
— AP
Tourists line up to enter the Tomb of Jesus as they stand under scaffolding built at the entrance ahead of the restoration on May 29, 2016, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem’s Old City. (AFP/Gali Tibbon)
Arnaud Mimran, a French businessman accused of fraud, tells Channel 10 that he gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu €170,000 in 2001, not the €35,000 as claimed by Netanyahu today.
Earlier today Netanyahu reiterated his rejection of the allegation that he received €1 million in campaign funding from Mimran, but acknowledged for the first time that he had received a smaller sum from the accused French fraudster.
“In August 2001 when Netanyahu was a private citizen, Mimran donated $40,000 to a fund for Mr. Netanyahu’s public activity, which included many media appearances and public diplomacy campaigns abroad on behalf of the State of Israel, and which was conducted in accordance with the law,” the PMO said.
Mimran clarifies that he gave a million — not euros, but francs (which were phased out two years earlier), equivalent to roughly €170,000.
“I came to celebrate with Netanyahu when he won [the elections] in 2009, eight years after the donation and there’s no connection to the money I gave him,” he tells the channel from France.
Chess grandmaster and four-time Soviet chess champion who fled to the West, Viktor Korchnoi, has died aged 85, the Russian chess federation said on Monday.
Korchnoi died in Switzerland where he had lived for many years after defecting to the West in 1976 from the Soviet Union. He had suffered from heart problems and had a stroke in 2012.
The player, born in 1931 in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, first played at the age of six, taught by his Jewish father.
He won four Soviet Union championships in 1960, 1962, 1966 and 1970. In 1974, he lost against Anatoly Karpov, who was then emerging as a great player.
Despite his many victories at a lower level, he never achieved his dream of becoming world chess champion.
The ambitious grandmaster “always stood out with his huge will for victory and constant striving for battle,” said the Russian chess federation in a statement.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the international chess federation (FIDE) told TASS news agency: “This is a great loss for the whole chess world. Korchnoi led a vivid life and did a lot to popularize chess.”
Korchnoi refused to return to the USSR in 1976 during a trip to play in a tournament in the Netherlands. This separated him from his wife and son and led to him being deprived of his Soviet citizenship.
He then moved for Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life, dying in the Wohlen area.
He was often called “Viktor the Terrible” and is believed by many to be the greatest chess player despite never getting the world champion title.
Unusually for chess, he continued playing long into his old age and became the oldest active chess grandmaster despite suffering health problems.
— AFP and Times of Israel staff
Jerusalem city hall has approved the construction of 82 apartment units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, whose original green light in 2010 during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel threw a wrench into relations between Israel and the US.
Channel 2 says that the Planning and Construction Committee approved the sale of 82 apartments, running against the government’s official stance on East Jerusalem development.
A police investigator from northern Israel is under investigation for corruption and obstruction of justice, according to Walla news.
The policeman is suspected of giving associates information from investigations, and performing police duties for cash.
Three civilians are also under investigation in the case.
The four suspects will be brought before a Jerusalem court for an extension of their arrest.
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