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The Daily Edition

What Matters Most On Friday, December 24, 2021

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Iran says it fired 16 ballistic missiles in a drill on December 24, 2021 (Screen grab)

In ‘warning’ to Israel, Iran says it fired 16 ballistic missiles able to hit country

By Agencies and ToI Staff

Armed forces chief says exercise is a response to Israeli threats; Guards leader adds: We’ll cut off Zionist regime’s hands if they make a mistake

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid speaks during a Yesh Atid faction meeting at the Knesset, on October 25, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Lapid: ‘Bad’ nuclear pact with Iran worse than no deal at all

Iraq's Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein listens as he and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken face reporters as they meet at the State Department in Washington, DC, on July 23, 2021. (Elizabeth Frantz/Pool via AP)

Iraq calls for direct nuclear talks between Iran and US

By AFP

A traveler seen at Ben Gurion International Airport, on December 19, 2021. (Flash90)

As travel exemption requests pile up, panel accused of issuing automatic rejections

Committee tasked with granting permission to those looking to fly to banned countries reported to have backlog of 15,000 petitions, with most of those considered being denied

A nurse administers a dose of the coronavirus vaccine at a pop-up Health Ministry vaccine center at the Malcha mall in Jerusalem, on December 23, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Israel said delaying rollout of 4th COVID shots amid signs Omicron less severe

Medical workers tend to a COVID-19 patient on a ventilator in the intensive care unit at the la Timone hospital in Marseille, southern France, on December 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

WHO warns booster campaigns prolonging pandemic

By AFP

A healthcare worker prepares a vaccine in Safed, northern Israel, November 29, 2021. (David Cohen/Flash90)

4th COVID vaccine dose clinical trial delayed after key panel holds up approval

Helsinki Committee authorizing clinical trials yet to sign off on test-run of extra booster for 100 volunteers for unknown reason, even as Health Ministry okays shot for elderly

Healthcare workers take test samples on December 21, 2021 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

COVID case count jumps by 79% since last week; 183 new Omicron infections diagnosed

Merck's new antiviral medication molnupiravir. (Merck & Co. via AP, File)

US approves Merck pill as 2nd easy-to-use drug against COVID-19

By MATTHEW PERRONE

A dose of a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is prepared at Lurie Children's hospital, November 5, 2021, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

Israel media review

Shooting blanks: What the press says about non-lockdowns, non-doses and non-threats

By Joshua Davidovich

The somehow still-looming Omicron threat brings with it worries of fresh restrictions (and a quarantine pandemic), a fourth shot gets frozen and Israel changes its tune on Iran

Illustrative: An ambulance at the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem, on November 4, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Pregnant woman, 31, dies of flu in Jerusalem amid rise in cases; baby born healthy

Woman was 9 months pregnant when she contracted virus; son delivered by Caesarean section before mother put on ventilator, but doctors unable to save her

Kenneth Jacobson

The day Mansour Abbas told Israeli Arabs to accept Israel as a Jewish state

If Abbas’ message gets through to the right people, then Israel’s Jews and Arabs might just get their acts together to work to improve things for everyone

Ilana Sober Elzufon

Miryam and Bitya

What really happened when the daughter of Pharaoh went down to bathe and found a Hebrew baby in a basket on the Nile? A suggestion (Shemot)

We were robbed; let’s not become robbers

Israel’s current government has the opportunity and responsibility to include the country’s non-Jewish citizens and residents in the national narrative

If you ask me, and I’m Jewish, go with ’Merry Christmas’

’Happy Holidays’ is meant to be inclusive, but knowing when Hanukkah was (a month ago) would be far more so; this ’holiday season’ really means Christmastime

Interview'Funny how a few scribbles on a blackboard changed history'

Helping the US get the bomb, this Jewish mathematician faced an ethical problem

By Rich Tenorio

New film ‘Adventures of a Mathematician’ follows Stan Ulam, who lost nearly his entire family in the Holocaust, as he helps his new homeland’s nuclear efforts during and after WWII

United Arab Emirates astronaut Hazzaa al-Mansoori gestures shortly after the landing in a space capsule about 150 km (90 miles) south-east of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan, on October 3, 2019. (Dmitri Lovetsky/Pool/AFP)

Peace: The final frontier

UAE astronaut gifts Jewish state with Israeli flag he took to space

Hazzaa al-Mansoori flew to the International Space Station with the national ensign a year before the Abraham Accords normalized relations between the UAE and Israel

Explainer

Rising cases, empty wards: Israel’s COVID situation explained in six graphs

In mid-November, when Israel felt Delta was defeated, cases began to go up once again. How has the rise in infections progressed and where does Israel stand now?

A healthcare worker at a drive testing complex in Modi'in, (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

Shoppers wearing face masks walk down Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, in London, on December 23, 2021. (AP/Frank Augstein)

UK data suggest hospitalization 50-70% less likely with Omicron than Delta

By Jill Lawless

A Christmas display at the entrance to the Tel Aviv flagship store of Tiv Ta’am, an Israeli supermarket chain known for selling food that doesn’t meet kosher dietary rules. (Asaf Shalev via JTA)

For a growing number of Jews in Israel, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

An influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, combined with tech firms trying to project image of cosmopolitan savvy, mean the festival is becoming increasingly mainstream

Coronavirus, and rain, dampen Christmas joy in Bethlehem

By jack jeffery

As cases surge, world set to ring in another pandemic Christmas with restrictions

By Andrew BEATTY

Former Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg is flanked by some of the many opponents to the Europe Asia Pipeline Company's deal to transfer Gulf oil, outside the High Court in Jerusalem, on December 23, 2021. (Dov Greenblat, Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel)

Green groups claim victory, withdraw court petition against Eilat oil deal

Move follows state attorney’s opinion that the Environmental Protection Ministry had full authority to act against the agreement

The carcass of a crane, infected by avian flu, at the Hula Valley Nature Reserve in northern Israel, on December 23, 2021. (Shlomit Shavit, Israel Nature and Parks Authority)

A fifth of wild cranes in Israel thought to be infected with fatal bird flu

Illustrative: Global warming. (Chonticha Wat; iStock by Getty Images)

Investors poured $2.2b into Israeli climate tech companies in 2021 — report

By Ricky Ben-David

Interview

Allied with the right, Labor’s Michaeli insists she’s keeping peace hopes alive

Transportation minister says she won’t okay West Bank projects that harm 2-state solution, and her ties with US progressives will be critical to rebuilding bilateral relationship

Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli leads a Labor party faction meeting at the Knesset on October 4, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Times Will Tell

Podcast: For Xmas in NY, the best Kosher Chinese and a movie with ToI’s film critic

Whether you call it Christmas or Festivus, while some places may be closed, there’s plenty to do in New York for the rest of us

Border Police officers prepare to raze illegal buildings at the wildcat Homesh outpost on December 24, 2021. (courtesy, Border Police)

Border cops raze buildings at illegal outpost as army girds for West Bank clashes

Yeshiva frequented by shooting victim remains standing, but settler leaders call demolition ‘prize for terror’; IDF said to fear Hamas looking to capitalize on simmering tensions

Israelis demonstrate at Homesh in the northern West Bank, on December 23, 2021, calling on the government not to demolish the outpost after a yeshiva student there was killed in a shooting attack. (Screenshot/Twitter)

Thousands rally against razing of illegal outpost where terror victim studied

Qasseem al-Asafra (left) and Nasir al-Asafra. (Social media)

2 terrorists who killed Israeli Dvir Sorek in 2019 sentenced to life in prison

Illustrative: Frank Corbett, the Deputy Premier of Nova Scotia, is flanked by a Royal Canadian Mountie during the lighting of the City of Boston's Christmas tree in Boston, November 29, 2012. The annual gift by Nova Scotia of the tree is in honor of aid that Boston sent following the 1917 explosion of a munitions ship in Halifax harbor that killed more than 1,600. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

'Thank you for being there when we needed you'

The little-known Jewish origins of Boston’s annual Christmas tree tradition

By Penny Schwartz

For over 50 years, Nova Scotians have gifted Bostoners a spruce in gratitude for an aid mission led by Abraham Ratshesky in 1917 after a port explosion killed and injured thousands

Christmas tree, huge menorah ignite latest fight over holidays in US public schools

By Gabe Stutman

Tel Aviv's historic Gordon Gallery opened its new location in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul industrial zone on December 22, 2021 (Courtesy PR)

Tel Aviv’s Gordon Gallery brings contemporary art to an unlikely corner of Jerusalem

By Jessica Steinberg

Branching into the capital, the historic art house has opened a light and airy space in the Givat Shaul industrial zone, looking for different kinds of neighbors and possibilities

Illustrative: Members of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States (ARIS) gift Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan an ornate menorah on behalf of the Turkish Jewish Community during a meeting with the president in his Ankara palace, December 23, 2021. From left to right: Akif Gilalov, head of the World Congress of Mountain Jews; Berel Lazar, chief rabbi of Russia; Erdogan; Isak Haleva, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Turkey; Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, director of ARIS; Erol Kohen, president of the Turkish Jewish Community. (David I. Klein/JTA)

'We all have to strive for peace in the Middle East'

Confab of rabbis from Islamic nations whisked off for surprise visit with Erdogan

By David I. Klein

Turkish leader, long critical of Israel, tells spiritual leaders he values renewed dialogue with Herzog, Bennett; says he supports rebuilding local synagogues, condemns Holocaust

Rabbi Michael Cook teaches a class at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 2016. (Janine Spang)

'Our system is not broken... but it does need repair'

Probing ethics process, Reform group finds late rabbi ducked abuse complaints

New report commissioned by the Central Conference of American Rabbis reveals how Michael Cook was able to continue teaching after formal allegations were lodged against him

‘That was wrong’: James Franco admits he slept with students in his acting school

More Headlines

An unhoused man seen outside a grocery shop in the city center of Jerusalem on December 15, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Over 2.5 million Israelis live in poverty, among them 1.1 million kids, report finds

By Ricky Ben-David

The scene where a young woman died in a house fire in Yanuh-Jat, December 24, 2021 (Fire and Rescue Services)

Woman, 24, dies in Yanuh-Jat fire; suspicion blaze caused by cellphone that ignited

President Isaac Herzog (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Collage/AP)

Herzog, Putin invite one another for visits during phone call

Polish Senator Krzysztof Brejza on the night of parliamentary elections, on October 13, 2019. (AP Photo)

Polish opposition senator hacked with spyware from Israel’s NSO Group

By Vanessa Gera and Frank Bajak

Illustrative: Chen Ying-hsuan, right, holds Li Li-chen's hand during a military mass weddings ceremony in Taoyuan city, northern Taiwan, Oct. 30, 2020. (AP/Chiang Ying-ying)

Hungarian Jewish group backpedals after coming out against gay marriage

By Cnaan Liphshiz

Illustrative: Departure gates at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv, on January 26, 2018. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

14-year-old Palestinian arrested with large knife in Tel Aviv bus station

Sheryl Sandberg (second from right) poses with members of United Hatzalah's women's unit in Jerusalem, on August 28. 2019. (United Hatzalah)

Sheryl Sandberg donates $5 million to United Hatzalah’s women’s unit

Still from Israeli director Eran Kolirin's latest film, 'Let It Be Morning,' written by Sayed Kashua. (Courtesy Cohen Media Group)

Israel’s controversial Oscar submission gets snubbed on the 2022 Academy shortlist

Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Tovah Feldshuh, on the set of ‘Becoming Dr. Ruth,’ at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, December 8, 2021. (Courtesy Josh Halpern)

Ruth be toldDr. Ruth gushes over ‘brilliant’ portrayal of her in one-woman show

By julia GERGELY

Illustrative: An Iranian man holds a cup of tea. (ATTA KENARE/AFP/File)

Tehran tea partyIran to accept payment in tea for Sri Lankan oil debt

By AFP

Ben & Jerrys 'Pecan Resist' ice-cream, launched October 2018. (Ben & Jerry's)

Illinois divests pension funds from Unilever over Ben & Jerry’s settlement boycott

Covers of the 72-year-old Jewish Currents magazine. (JTA collage)

Leftist US Jewish magazine apologizes for running Israel fellowship ad

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