ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 528
Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
The Times of Israel liveblogged Sunday’s events as they unfolded.
Eli Bin, head of the Magen David Adom Rescue service, testifies at the trial of Elor Azaria — the soldier accused of killing a wounded Palestinian assailant in Hebron in March — that his paramedics won’t necessarily rush to treat wounded attackers.
“The MDA rules are clear — we won’t touch a terrorist until we know for sure he doesn’t have a bomb on him.”
He adds that if he were at the March 24 shooting, he would have also made sure everybody stay away from Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, and to watch out for any follow-up attack.
Azaria, on trial for manslaughter, has said he shot al-Sharif after thinking he had a bomb on him.
The UN Security Council is due to meet in the coming hours for an emergency session to discuss the escalating violence in Syria, where air strikes have continued to pound rebel-held east Aleppo, killing dozens.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has described the bombing campaign as “chilling.”
Overnight, residents and a monitor reported heavy air raids on the besieged east of the city, which Syria’s army has pledged to retake.
The meeting is scheduled for 3 p.m. GMT, (6 p.m. in Israel).
The United States and its European allies said Saturday it was up to Moscow to save the truce.
“The burden is on Russia to prove it is willing and able to take extraordinary steps to salvage diplomatic efforts,” read a joint statement from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the United States and European Union.
“Patience with Russia’s continued inability or unwillingness to adhere to its commitments is not unlimited,” the statement added.
— AFP
A senior military official says a massive underground barrier being built along the Gaza border to defend against Hamas tunnels should be completed in a matter of months.
The Southern Command official says the structure will include a wall deep below the ground as well as flooding parts of the roughly 60-kilometer (40-mile) border.
Cranes and other machinery are seen on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza Strip, on September 8, 2016. (AFP/Menahem Kahana)
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity under military briefing regulations, says the goal is to turn Hamas’s underground network into a “death trap.”
During the 2014 war, Hamas fighters managed on several occasions to make their way into Israel through a tunnel network.
— Agencies
If you think your Rosh Hashanah feast will be enough to feed an army, the IDF — an actual army — wants you to know that it has you beat, by a few tons at least.
For the holiday next week, Israel’s hungry troopers will be dipping some 14 tons of apples into 2 tons of honey and washing it down with 7,500 bottles of grape juice, according to an army press release.
There will also be some 7 tons of pomegranates that some poor shmuck will have to try to get the seeds out of.
For the main course, soldiers will chow down on about 42 tons of chicken and turkey, 10 tons of roast beef and goulash, 10 tons of fish (no word if the head is included), 13 tons of everyone’s favorite — schntizel — and 12 tons of barbecue meats.
A baby wearing a beret on an IDF jeep on June 29, 2014. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)
And they certainly won’t forget to round it out with some 32 tons of fruits and veggies.
Vegetarians will also have a few tons of whatever it is the army thinks they eat.
And for those soldiers lucky enough to get to spend the Jewish new year out guarding posts and carrying out operations, Chez IDF has them covered with 2,000 doggie bags of Rosh Hashanah combat rations.
The IDF says it has indicted more than 145 Palestinians so far this year for incitement over social media.
Sunday’s announcement comes amid an Israeli campaign to stamp out the online incitement it says fueled months of Palestinian attacks.
Earlier this month, ministers Gilad Erdan and Ayelet Shaked met with Facebook executives to discuss ways of limiting calls to violence on the platform.
Israel says Facebook should do more to monitor and control content, raising a host of issues over whether the company is responsible for material posted by its users.
Israeli lawmakers have proposed legislation that seeks to force social networks to remove content Israel considers to be incitement.
— Agencies
A monitoring group says Syrian rebels have retaken an area in Aleppo that fell to government forces the day before, extending a punishing stalemate in the contested northern city.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which maintains a network of local contacts, says rebels seized Handarat, a largely uninhabited Palestinian refugee camp, early Sunday.
The area is near Castello Road, a vital supply route to the city’s besieged rebel-held areas.
Government forces seized the Castello Road earlier this year, besieging rebel-held districts where some 250,000 people reside.
A Syrian man waters his plants in the rebel-held town of Douma, on the eastern outskirts of the capital Damascus on September 25, 2016. (AFP/Abd Doumany)
Yasser al-Yousef, a spokesman for the Nour el-Din al-Zinki rebel faction, says rebels seized Handarat late Saturday.
The Observatory says 213 civilians have been killed by airstrikes and shelling on rebel-held areas in and around Aleppo since a cease-fire expired Monday.
— AP
Two teenage girls from the French city of Nice are being held on suspicion of planning an attack directed by a notorious Syria-based French jihadist, a source close to the investigation says.
The suspects, aged 17 and 19, live in the same area of Nice as Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the radicalized Tunisian man who drove the truck that killed 86 people in the city on July 14.
Searches failed to find any weapons at their homes.
The teenagers have told investigators they had been in contact with Rachid Kassim, a French jihadist based in the areas of Syria and Iraq held by the Islamic State group.
— AFP
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in a virtual dead heat in their bitter race for the White House on the eve of their first head-to-head presidential debate, a new poll shows.
The two are each set to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday. Netanyahu is slated to sit down with Trump at about 5 p.m. Israel time and with Clinton later on in the day, before returning to Israel.
Large images of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump are seen on a CNN vehicle, behind a security fence, on September 24, 2014, at Hofstra University, in Hempsted, New York. (AFP/Paul J. Richards)
The Washington Post-ABC News poll find that Clinton’s slim margin from last month has now vanished. Instead, the Democrat and her Republican rival tied at 41 percent support among registered voters, with Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson at 7% and Green Party nominee Jill Stein at 2%.
In a two-way match-up, Clinton and Trump each got 46% among registered voters.
While some other national surveys show Clinton with a lead, poll averages show a low, single-digit margin.
— AFP
The cause of a blast in Hungary that injured two police officers late Saturday remains unknown, although news report on public television say security cameras had recorded a bag being left at the scene shortly before the explosion.
Unconfirmed police sources also tell local media that an investigation has been launched into attempted murder.
A homemade bomb device was likely to have been behind the blast, an explosives expert Attila Ladocsi tells news outlet M1.
Police are to give a detailed account of the investigation later Sunday, a government spokesman Bence Tuzson tells the MTI news agency.
Hungarian police officials investigate an explosion of unknown origin in Budapest on September 25, 2016. (AFP/Ferenc ISZA)
A session of the national security parliamentary committee has been convened for Monday its chairperson tells MTI.
No information has been released on the injured police officers’ condition, nor confirmation of local media reports that one of the injured was a woman.
Forensic personnel have been combing the area for clues, while police carry out door-to-door inquiries with residents.
— AFP
Donald Trump says on Twitter he is looking forward to his meeting with Netanyahu.
The meeting is slated to take place at Trump’s eponymous tower at 10 a.m. New York time (5 p.m. in Israel).
Netanyahu will meet Clinton later in the day.
Looking forward to my meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in Trump Tower at 10:00 A.M.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2016
A child has died from injuries sustained during a bomb attack on a Kurdish wedding in southern Turkey last month, raising the death toll to 57, local Turkish media report.
As a result, 34 children are now among those killed in the suicide attack in the city of Gaziantep which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said was carried out by a child bomber acting on the orders of the Islamic State group.
Ambulances arrive at the site of an explosion on August 20, 2016 in Gaziantep following a late night militant attack on a wedding party in southeastern Turkey. (AFP/Ahmed Deeb)
Mahsun Nas, 13, was the latest victim of the bombing on August 20, the Dogan news agency reports. He succumbed to his injuries while in a hospital where he had been since the attack.
The bombing was the deadliest in 2016 after the country has suffered more than a year of attacks linked to IS and Kurdish militants.
— AFP
IDF soldiers will now be able to completely avoid interactions with members of the opposite sex, according to a new directive handed down by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot.
In a bid to be more inclusive of the ultra-Orthodox, the IDF has updated its Order for Joint Service to allow any soldier who feels that an event would go against their beliefs to submit a request to their commander to get out of it.
Soldiers can ask to not serve alongside members of the opposite sex, and the order further strengthens the rules against shared living spaces.
“We will allow all male and female soldiers to serve — in accordance with the law — without harming their way of life,” the amendment to the order reads.
The revised rule separates IDF events into two categories: formal and way of life.
Formal events — Independence and Memorial Day ceremonies, Holocaust Remembrance Day, services for fallen soldiers, Rabin’s memorial day — will be more difficult for soldiers to avoid, according to the order.
Way of life events — visits to cultural institutions or historic landmarks — will be based on “discretion” of the commander.
There have been a number of issues in recent years of soldiers refusing to attend events where female singers — considered verbotten for some ultra-Orthodox — are performing.
— Judah Ari Gross
Israeli TV shows images of Benjamin Netanyahu, surrounded by his large security detail, exiting a limo and entering the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan for his meeting with Donald Trump.
No press is being allowed in either this meeting or a later sit-down with Hillary Clinton, which comes a day before the first debate between the two presidential nominees, but official photos are expected to be released by their respective camps later.
Netanyahu is expected to use the meeting to speak to the candidates about the large defense aid package recently signed between Washington and Jerusalem, according to Channel 2.
He’s also expected to try and convince the two to block any anti-resolution in the UN Security Council, including an effort rumored to be in the works from US President Barack Obama after the election but before he leaves office.
Israel’s Army Radio is broadcasting an interview with Netanyahu in which he clarifies, again, that he did not intend to compare Hebron shooter Elor Azaria to soldiers killed or missing in combat, as he appeared to do in a Channel 2 interview Friday.
“I didn’t mean to make any comparison, and there is no comparison between the pain of parents in situations like this and others and the terrible pain, the terrible suffering of bereaved parents,” he says. “I tell you this from personal experience, unfortunately. I had no intention of making a comparison like this. My words were not so successful, that’s true.”
The Islamic State terror group has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed six people in western Baghdad.
The bombing in the Iskan area also wounded 18 people, according to a statement from security spokesman Saad Maan.
IS says the attack was carried out by an Iraqi national wearing an explosive vest who had successfully penetrated security measures.
— AFP
A planned event in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square to mark Yom Kippur has been called off after protests over the lack of any women on the lineup.
The move comes after Radio Lev Hamedina, one of the sponsors of the October 9 show, pulled out.
Some singers scheduled to take part in the show, also either canceled or said they would reconsider appearing at the concert, which was supposed to be themed on traditional prayers from the Day of Atonement.
Instead, according to media reports, organizers will put on an event made up of traditional prayers of supplication, or slichot, without any performers.
Top diplomats from the world’s powers have begun an emergency meeting at the UN Security Council over the ongoing fighting in Syria, particularly a bombardment of Aleppo.
Starting now: the @UN Security Council meets on the situation in #Aleppo, Syria. Watch live: https://t.co/CKwP0DZcMh pic.twitter.com/wzQ7jwFBEg
— US Mission to the UN (@USUN) September 25, 2016
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault says Russia and Iran will be guilty of war crimes if they don’t pressure Syrian President Bashar Assad to stop escalating violence.
He adds that the meeting is a “moment of truth” for the UN
Assad’s regime “has clearly made the choice of a military escalation. I am calling on Russia and Iran to pull themselves together and show responsibility, by putting a stop to this strategy. … If not, Russia and Iran will be accomplices in war crimes committed in Aleppo,” he says.
The US, Britain, and France sought Sunday’s meeting, as pro-government forces continued their intense bombardment of Aleppo. They are widely believed to be accompanied by Russian air strikes.
— with AP
Netanyahu has now been in Trump Tower for about an hour, though it’s not known if he has spent the whole time in conversation with Trump.
Outside the building, alongside the heavy security and Israel media scrum, is the Naked Cowboy, a man in his tighty-whities who plays the guitar and has been a midtown Manhattan mainstay for at least a decade.
ברגע זה, במיגדל טראמפ: בפנים ביבי, בחוץ זה pic.twitter.com/DWuQs3iQKB
— Nitzan Horowitz (@NitzanHorowitz) September 25, 2016
At one point the Naked Cowboy even entertains Israeli viewers by shaking his own security package right at the camera.
He also annoys one TV presenter live on air by coming up behind him to hug him.
The meeting between Netanyahu and Donald Trump has ended, according to reports on the ground, after about an hour and 20 minutes.
The length would make the meeting twice as long as Netanyahu’s sit down with Barack Obama, which lasted a little over half an hour, according to US administration officials.
Israeli officials said the meeting with Obama lasted closer to an hour.
A top UN envoy has accused Syria of unleashing “unprecedented military violence” against civilians in Aleppo, at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
At the meeting, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also says Russia should be investigated for war crimes following an attack on a Syrian aid convoy that claimed 20 lives.
Staffan de Mistura says Syria’s declaration of a military offensive to retake rebel-held eastern Aleppo has led to one of the worst weeks of the 5 1/2-year war with dozens of airstrikes against residential areas and buildings causing scores of civilian deaths.
He says the offensive targeting civilians with sophisticated weapons including incendiary devices may amount to war crimes.
De Mistura said US-Russian talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s ministerial meeting failed to reinvigorate the September 9 cessation of hostilities, and the offensive has left two million people in Aleppo without water.
He urges an immediate cessation of hostilities, delivery of humanitarian aid, and evacuation of urgent medical cases.
Johnson says the West had been “too impotent in its response” to aggression by Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Russian backers during Syria’s civil war, now in its sixth year.
Johnson he says Russian air power may have deliberately targeted the civilian convoy on September 19. Russia denies involvement and instead suggests Syrian rebels or a US drone were responsible.
Russia is “guilty of protracting this war, of making it far more hideous. And yes … we should be looking at whether or not that targeting is done in the knowledge that those are wholly innocent civilian targets. That is a war crime,” he says.
Russian ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responds on Facebook to Johnson’s charges, with the equivalent of “I know you are but what am I.”
“The foreign minister of Great Britain Boris Johnson said in a broadcast of the BBC that Russia is guilty of protracting civil war in Syria and, possibly, of committing war crimes in the form of air attacks on convoys with humanitarian aid,” she writes. “All this is right except for two words: Instead of ‘Russia’ it needs to be ‘Great Britain’ and instead of ‘Syria,’ ‘Iraq.'”
— with AP
Syrian activists say several civilians have been killed in renewed airstrikes on opposition areas in the contested city of Aleppo.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 23 people have been killed in presumed government or Russian airstrikes on various neighborhoods in rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Sunday.
Ibrahim Alhaj of the Syrian Civil Defense search and rescue operation says the group has documented the deaths of 43 people so far.
Hospitals in the city are reporting that they are overwhelmed with casualties.
Mohammad Zein Khandaqani, a member of the Medical Council, which oversees medical affairs in the opposition areas, says he expects many of the most badly wounded will die from insufficient treatment and facilities.
“I’ve never seen so many people dying in once place,” he says from a hospital in the city.
— AP
Jordanian media, citing anonymous officials, have identified the man who shot and killed prominent and outspoken writer Nahed Hattar in front of the Amman courthouse where he had been on trial for sharing a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam.
The shooter is named as Riad Abdullah, an imam in his late 40s in northern Hashmi, a poor neighborhood in Amman.
The reports say Abdullah had recently returned from a trip abroad, but give no further details.
The Khabirni news site says Abdullah confessed to police that he was upset over the cartoon, which depicted a bearded man, smoking and in bed with two women, asking God to bring him wine and cashews.
All physical depictions of God or the Prophet Muhammad, even respectful ones, are forbidden under mainstream Islamic tradition.
Witnesses and police say Hattar, 56, was preparing to enter the courthouse for a hearing when the gunman shot him at close range.
The witness said the shooter, who was immediately arrested, was wearing a long grey robe and long beard characteristic of conservative Muslims.
— AP
Netanyahu’s bureau has released a statement about his meeting with Trump, saying he “thanked Mr. Trump for his friendship and support of Israel.”
“Prime Minister Netanyahu presented to Mr. Trump Israel’s stance regarding regional issues related to Israel’s security and its efforts to bring peace and stability to the region,” the statement reads.
Pictures released by Netanyahu’s Bureau show the two shaking hands and smiling in Trump’s gilded home in the Trump Tower.
The meeting took a little over an hour, according to the bureau. Netanyahu is set to meet Clinton later in the day.
Sources close to Netanyahu say he is meeting the candidates in their homes or offices because he appreciates they are busy ahead of the debate, scheduled for tomorrow.
Donald Trump’s camp says the candidate and Netanyahu discussed a wide variety of issues, including Israel’s experiences in building walls, with Trump vowing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital should he be elected president.
“Mr. Trump said that under a Trump administration, there will be extraordinary strategic, technological, military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries. Mr. Trump recognized Israel as a vital partner of the United States in the global war against radical Islamic terrorism,” the statement reads. “Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed at length Israel’s successful experience with a security fence that helped secure its borders.”
“Mr. Trump acknowledged that Jerusalem has been the eternal capital of the Jewish People for over 3,000 years, and that the United States, under a Trump administration, will finally accept the long-standing Congressional mandate to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel,” the statement reads.
The statement also says Trump and Netanyahu discussed ” at length the nuclear deal with Iran, the battle against ISIS and many other regional security concerns.”
“Mr. Trump recognized that Israel and its citizens have suffered far too long on the front lines of Islamic terrorism. He agreed with Prime Minister Netanyahu that the Israeli people want a just and lasting peace with their neighbors, but that peace will only come when the Palestinians renounce hatred and violence and accept Israel as a Jewish State,” according to the release.
The statement says Trump and Netanyahu have known each other for many years.
Trump had seemed to suggest earlier in his campaign that he would not support military aid to Israel or other countries, but the statement seems to walk that back.
“Mr. Trump agreed that the military assistance provided to Israel and missile defense cooperation with Israel are an excellent investment for America,” the statement reads.
Present at the meeting with the two were also envoy to the US Ron Dermer and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who advises the candidate on Israel.
The Prime Minister’s Office says Netanyahu will meet with Hillary Clinton at 6:30 p.m. New York time (1:30 a.m. in Israel).
The meeting will take place in the W Hotel on 17th Avenue, where there will likely be considerably less gold than in the Trump Tower.
Netanyahu is expected to return to Israel after the meeting, following nearly a week in New York.
Former MK Sharon Gal, currently a news presenter for Israel’s Channel 20, has released the full tape of a phone call between Netanyahu and Charlie Azaria, father of Elor Azaria, accused of manslaughter for killing a wounded Palestinian assailant.
The release of the tape, much of which was made public months ago, comes days after Netanyahu ignited a firestorm by appearing to compare his call with the Azarias to his call with families of killed or missing soldiers.
In the tape, a sympathetic sounding Netanyahu tells a tearful Azaria to rely on the army investigation.
“I’ve given my whole life to this country, Mr. Prime Minister. I’m on recognized disability from the Defense Ministry. I was in the police for 30 years, investigated criminals, put them in jail and putt cuffs on them. When I see my son in cuffs,” Azaria says before being choked up.
“Charlie, I feel your pain, I trust in the investigation, and they will give Elor his full right to defend himself,” Netanyahu answers.
Hungary’s police chief says that authorities are hunting for a man who set off a homemade fragmentation bomb that seriously wounded two officers in central Budapest.
National police chief Karoly Papp says police were the targets in the blast late Saturday, saying that the suspect “wanted to execute my police officers.” Papp doesn’t say why the suspect wanted to harm police officers, but he doesn’t rule out terrorism.
Police have offered a 10-million-forint ($36,700) reward for information leading to the capture of the suspect, believed to be 20-25 years old and 170 centimeters (around 5’6″) tall.
A 23-year-old female officer suffered life-threatening injuries while her 26-year-old male partner was also seriously wounded while they were on foot patrol. Both were recuperating in intensive care after surgery.
— AP
A prosecutor is calling for a 12-year jail term to be handed down to a Palestinian minor for stabbing an Israeli child in October 2015, his lawyer says.
Ahmed Manasra, a 14-year-old Palestinian, was convicted in May this year of the attempted murder of two Israelis in a knife attack last October.
He was 13 when he carried out the attack with his 15-year-old cousin Hassan Manasra.
The two stabbed and seriously wounded a 20-year-old and a 12-year-old boy in the Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev in East Jerusalem.
Hassan Manasra was shot dead by security forces, while Ahmed Manasra was hit by a car as they fled.
Manasra’s lawyer Lea Tzemel says after a hearing behind closed doors that her client had apologized “to the child he stabbed, who was present in court.”
After his conviction in May, she said Manasra “said he just wanted to scare Jews so they’d stop killing Palestinians”.
“The prosecution is demanding a 12-year prison sentence,” she says.
“We have requested a procedure of reintegration, given that he is a minor and minors have more rights when it comes to reintegration into society,” Tzemel adds.
— AFP
The International Committee for the Red Cross says it has delivered food, medical supplies, and other supplies to a set of four besieged Syrian towns that have been inaccessible to aid organizations in nearly six months.
The organization said Sunday it was reaching 60,000 residents trapped in the towns of Madaya, Zabadani, Foua, and Kafraya.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which is managing the convoys jointly with the UN and the ICRC, says 53 trucks have reached Madaya and Zabadani, besieged by pro-government forces, and 18 trucks have reached Kafraya and Foua, which are besieged by rebels.
Government forces and rebels have so far blocked the UN from establishing regular aid access to besieged areas in Syria. The UN estimates 600,000 Syrians are trapped in different sieges.
— AP
