President Joe Biden marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by criticizing Americans for the anti-Muslim anger that occurred in the United States after the attacks took place.
“We also witnessed the dark forces of human nature. Fear and anger. Resentment and violence against Muslim-Americans — true and faithful followers of a peaceful religion,” Biden said in a prerecorded video published for the occasion.
New details relating to Friday's attempted stabbing attack have been released, and the terrorist has been identified as Dr. Khazm al-Julani, a doctor of about 50 from one of Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods.
In footage released by Israel Police, al-Julani can be seen attacking one of the police officers with a knife. The officer reacts by protecting himself and running backwards before opening fire and neutralizing the terrorist.
The Border Police who were standing behind the terrorist also drew their weapons
.Al-Julani, who served as director of a college for alternative medicine in Jerusalem, did not manage to stab the police officers. However, one of the Border Police officers suffered light injuries to his leg after flying shrapnel hit him.
Israel’s Ministry of Finance offered El Al Israel Airlines a $50 million aid package today. The company was already having financial problems before the Covid crisis began but has been hit especially hard by the Coronavirus pandemic.
But there is a catch. Kenny Rozenberg, El Al’s current owner, must also loan the company $43 million out of his own pocket if the airline is to receive the funds. The airline will also be required to sell off some of its planes.
El Al was reportedly hoping on getting as much as $150 million in government aid as compensation for all of the lost revenue caused by government-required shutdowns and limitations on travel.
The Ministry of Finance has also offered Israel’s other two airlines Arkia and Israir a $7 million grant each. Israel’s smaller air carriers had asked for much more than that with Arkia asking for a $35 million bailout and Israir asking for $20 million in government aid.
The Population and Immigration Authority on Friday morning reported that so far it has located 152 passengers who have returned from Ukraine and tested positive for the coronavirus. Twenty direct flights from Ukraine and additional connection flights are expected to land at Ben Gurion International before the start of Shabbat.
A hundred and seventeen Israelis returning from Ukraine were summoned for questioning on suspicion of forgery and fraud, as well as spreading of disease under aggravated circumstances, for boarding their flight after presenting with a fake negative test. Fifty-six of them managed to enter Israel before the lists of suspects and positive tests arriving from Ukraine were transferred to the authorities at Ben Gurion from the Health Ministry. Now they will all be questioned by police.
Thursday also saw the first individuals with fake negative tests who are, in fact, positive, and they were driven home by dedicated transportation and ambulances, and criminal proceedings will be launched against them. Police estimate that there are hundreds of more such cases.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Thursday ordered severe enforcement measures against returnees from Uman who enter Israel under false pretenses. The following are the PM’s directives:
The Palestinian Authority has agreed to cooperate with Israel to locate and apprehend six Arab terrorists who escaped from a prison in northern Israel this week, according to a report by a Lebanese newspaper Friday morning.
According to the Beirut-based Al Akhbar, the Palestinian Authority recently agreed to aid Israel’s efforts, and has even begun working with Israeli forces to locate the terrorists.
While the PA has officially refused to take part in Israel’s efforts to capture the escaped terrorists, Friday’s report claimed that two days ago, high-ranking officials in the ruling Fatah party’s central committee held deliberations with Palestinian Authority security top brass, with the two sides ultimately deciding to work with Israel.
The decision to aid Israel was reportedly made amid concerns that a major Israeli operation to retrieve the escaped terrorists could lead to a major escalation in Judea and Samaria and ultimately derail cooperation between Israel and the PA aimed at bolstering the Arab economy in the area.
Over the past few days, Arab rioters have clashed with Israeli security personnel in Judea and Samaria as Israeli forces continue to search for the escaped terrorists.
Top Palestinian Authority officials are especially fearful, the report continued, that the six escaped terrorists could be killed by Israeli forces.
As a condition for its assistance, the PA has reportedly demanded that Israel work to capture the terrorists and refrain from eliminating them if possible.
PA security officials have already held several meetings with Israeli officers to coordinate the manhunt, the report said.
The escaped terrorists include Zakaria Zubeidi, the former Jenin chief of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades terrorist organization, and five terrorists from Islamic Jihad, including Iham Kamamji, who murdered Eliyahu Ashri in 2006.
Other escaped terrorists in the group include Mondal Infia'at, Mahmad A'arida, Mohammad A'arida, Yaqoub Qadari.
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| Yaakov and Rabbi Chanoch Gechtman |
On a winter night in 1943, a young, frightened woman knocked on the window of the Vashkinel home in a small town not far from Vilna.
The woman quickly handed Amelia Vashkinel a small, tightly wrapped bundle containing a baby, who was just a few days old. That night was preceded by several secret meetings held between Amelia and Batya, the baby’s mother, who knew she had been sentenced to death and wanted to save her son.
With the Holocaust at its peak, Amelia was afraid to take in a Jewish baby and raise him. She explained to the mother that if it became known that he was Jewish she would be put to death. But Batya, determined to save her son at all cost, told Amelia: “You are a Christian. When he grows up he’ll be a priest and a teacher.”
Amelia hesitated, weighing the pros and cons of taking in the baby, and in the end decided to give life to the helpless baby in her arms.
Batya whispered the child’s name and disappeared into the darkness. “You had a very Jewish family name,” the adoptive mother told her son, when she revealed the secret to him 35 years later. “But I very quickly forgot it. I was afraid it would be a death sentence. And so I didn’t want to remember anything from that night.”
This is the story of that child, Yaakov, whose life has taken many turns. He discovered conclusively that he was a Jew when he was a senior priest in Poland. In recent years, however, his life has come full circle.
Yad L’Achim has been at Yaakov’s side during this process, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. It provided him with sacred Jewish objects, and more. Recently, an extraordinary meeting was held between Yaakov and Rabbi Chanoch Gechtman, head of Yad L’Achim’s counter missionary department.
At the meeting, Yaakov was moved by the sound of the shofar, which he compared to the deep cry of a long-lost son returning to his father.
“This is my story, the baby that was taken captive,” Yaakov responded with great emotion.
Everyone in the room was moved by the sight of an 81-year-old Jew who had lost his Jewish identity as a baby during the Holocaust, returning to his people.
Yaakov added: “Look at how amazing things turned out. Hashgacha [divine providence] arranged things such that from a young age I was a teacher and then a priest. I never married, which means I never married a non-Jew, and I never had non-Jewish children. I imagine that had things worked out differently, it would have been much more difficult for me to leave everything and return to the religion of my fathers.”
Yaakov now lives in Jerusalem and works for Yad Vashem. He continues to enjoy a warm connection with Yad L’Achim.
In a recent interview with Channel 12 News to mark the premiere of the series' fifth season, the show's actors praised Israel and complimented the country and its security forces.
When asked about his trip to Israel, actor Darko Peric, who plays the character "Helsinki" in the show, answered: "It was a wonderful experience, and I hope to come back. I know there are a lot of fans here, and the people here are great. When people travel to Israel they always talk about the strict security arrangements and meticulous police activity. But when I got here, even the policemen wanted to take pictures with me. It was great."
Spanish-Armenian actor Hovik Keuchkerian (who plays the character "Bogotá"), also complimented the Jewish state, saying he had "heard wonderful things about Israel." Keuchkerian also praised the original Israeli Netflix action-drama series Fauda.
As expected, the comments sparked the consternation of online activists, anti-Zionists and keyboard warriors, who are now calling for Money Heist to be boycotted.
"While millions of fans of Money Heist eagerly await the fifth season, actors from the successful show interviewed with the Israeli press, expressed support for the Israeli occupation and praised its criminal activity against Palestinian civilians," said one person on Twitter.
"What a disgrace," wrote another.
Some of the social media commenters called on actress Alba Flores, who plays the character "Nairobi," to respond to her colleagues' remarks. In May, during Operation Guardian of the Walls in Gaza, Flores tweeted support for the Palestinians and condemned Israel's military activity.
Others went to IMDB, an online database of information related to films, television programs and more, and posted critical statements against the actors for their support of Israel.
"Our voices must reach the show's producers to make it clear to them that their actors' expressions of support for Israel will not go without a response," one individual wrote.
The Taliban are willing to establish relations with all countries except Israel, a spokesman for the Islamist militant group has announced.
Suhail Shaheen told Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik: 'In a new chapter if America wants to have a relation with us, which could be in the interest of both countries and both peoples, and if they want to participate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, they are welcome.'
But he went on: 'Of course, we won't have any relation with Israel. We want to have relations with other countries, Israel is not among these countries.'
The Taliban has a history of supporting al-Qaeda, which routinely makes threats against the State of Israel and uses anti-Semitic rhetoric in its jihadist propaganda.
Last month, Shaheen caused surprise when he gave an interview to Israel's Kan public broadcaster. Just hours after it aired, the Taliban spokesman tweeted that he had been 'duped' into giving it.
'I do many interviews with journalists every day after the falling of provincial centers of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul to the Islamic Emirate,' he said.
'Some journalists maybe masquerading but I haven't done interview with any one introducing himself he is from an Israeli media.'
The last Jew in Afghanistan, Zabulon Simantov, has left the country and is now in route to the United States.Simantov, 62, born in the western Afghanistan city of Herat, is also a divorce-refuser who refuses to grant his estranged wife living in Israel a bill of divorce.
Several days ago he left his home in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and was taken by bus along with close to 30 other Afghans fleeing the country, mostly women and children, to a border crossing with an unnamed neighboring country, KAN News reported.
Despite the recent takeover of Afghanistan by the extremist Taliban movement, Simantov had refused to leave the country and had said he was not worried by the new regime.
In recent days however, he became increasingly concerned by the threat to his life from the Afghan branch of Islamic State and other terrorist groups, and finally decided to leave.
Over the last few weeks, Moshe Margaretten, a prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Brooklyn, New York, and Israeli-American businessman Moti Kahana attempted to convince Simantov to leave the country and facilitated his departure, although Simantov initially refused.
Over the last few days he completed his journey to a border crossing and is now in neighboring Tajikistan before continuing on his way to the US.“I think what changed his mind is that his neighbors told him ‘Leave and take our children with you because our children are in danger,’” Kahana told KAN News.
Arab security prisoners rioted and set fires in seven cells in Israeli prisons on Wednesday in protest of new restrictions in the wake of the escape of six highly dangerous prisoners from Gilboa Prison on Monday. A prisoner at Gilboa prison threw boiling water at a prison guard.
Most of the rioters are followers of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Since five of the six escapees were PIJ terrorists, including four serving life sentences, over 400 prisoners were moved in order to scatter members of PIJ in separate cells.
The six escapees were high-security prisoners, between 26 and 49 years old, who had all committed deadly terror attacks in Israel. Three of them had attempted to escape in the past. Police suspect that some prison guards may have assisted the escapees and prison service staff members are being questioned by the police. Other guards failed to properly fulfill their duties, including the one that was in the guard tower above the escape tunnel who was asleep during the escape.
Walla News reported that according to a preliminary investigation, the prisoners coordinated the escape with accomplices outside the prison with smuggled cell phones. The accomplices were waiting outside the prison with an escape car, changes of clothing, and weapons.
The most well-known among the escapees is Zakaria Zubeidi, 46, who was a commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed group affiliated with Fatah, during the second intifada from 2000-2005, and responsible for multiple terror attacks resulting in the murder of numerous Israelis.
One senior police official said that the escape is one of the worst such incidents in Israel’s history.
