Israel News

New Digest — 6/19/20

In News Surrounding Israel by The Friends of Israel

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Partial Eclipse In Israel Sunday Morning, 21st

A partial eclipse will be visible in Israel on Sunday morning, June 21.

The eclipse will begin at 7:25am and reach its peak at 8:24am.  It will end at 9:30am and last a total of 2 hours and 5 minutes,

An eclipse is caused when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun.  A partial eclipse occurs when the sun is partially occluded – a total eclipse when the sun is completely occluded by the moon.

The eclipse will be seen from most of Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, most of Asia, including India and China, as well as North Australia.  A total eclipse will be visible in parts of Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, northern India and southern China.

Israelis are advised not to look directly at the eclipse, as it can cause retinal damage known as “eclipse blindness” and “solar retinopathy” leading to permanent eye damage.   

Even normal sunglasses do not protect the eyes when viewing an eclipse.  Only special “solar-viewing glasses” or “eclipse glasses” will protect the eyes from damage when looking directly at an eclipse.

(israelnn.com)

 

Jordanian Official: We Won’t Damage Security Ties With Israel For Palestinians – Daniel Siryoti

A senior Jordanian official in Amman told Israel Hayom on Wednesday (17th): “The Palestinian interest is obviously important to us, but what’s more acute from our perspective is Jordan’s national and security interest….Any framework that will keep the Palestinians in the West Bank and not create a geographical connection between the independent Palestinian state and the Hashemite Kingdom is acceptable to us.”

“We won’t accept the presence of an international military force on Jordan’s western border and certainly won’t accept the presence of a Palestinian military force responsible for safeguarding the kingdom’s western border.  This is also the reason for our objection in the past to the diplomatic initiative spearheaded by Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama administration, who wanted to transfer most of the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians, and proposed various and odd technological tools to preserve Jordan and Israel’s security interests.”

“From the perspective of the Jordanian security interest, we prefer an IDF presence west of the kingdom in the Jordan Valley over any other alternative.  We have no interest or intention of damaging our security relations with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians….I don’t see that any Arab leader is ruining relations with the Trump administration for the Palestinians.”

(israelhayom.com)

 

Report: Hezbollah’s ‘Anti-Semitic Brainwashing’ Of Lebanese Schoolchildren Exposed

International efforts to counter the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah need to be widened to include the group’s extensive network of schools and educational institutions, a new report released on Thursday (18th) asserts.

The report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – a copy of which was shared with The Algemeiner – observed that with the effective takeover by Hezbollah of Lebanon’s government in January this year, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite group “now wields greater influence over a broader range of Lebanese government policies than ever before.”

That includes the country’s education sector, which exposes thousands of students to anti-Semitic and anti-West incitement through textbooks, group activities and similar means.

“This kind of anti-Semitic brainwashing depends in part upon the silence of well-meaning observers in order to succeed,” David Weinberg – the ADL’s Washington director of international affairs and the author of the report, titled, “Teaching Anti-Semitism and Terrorism in Hezbollah Schools” – said in a phone interview on Wednesday (17th).

“International action to call out these hateful educational institutions is important as part of a broader strategy for combating Hezbollah terrorism.”

Although Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and some Latin American countries, the notion that the educational and welfare services it supports should be exempted from international sanctions still persists.

As the ADL report makes clear, Hezbollah doctrine violently rejects not just Zionism and Israel, but Judaism and the Jewish people.

A school history textbook analyzed by the ADL “claims that Judaism teaches its adherents they are ‘the masters of the world and the emperors of the universe, which nobody else is entitled to belong to, no matter his station’ and that ‘this is what made them [the Jews]  hated and outcast, and perhaps what intensified people’s aversion to them: their unjustness, their arrogance, their greed, and their monopolizing.”

Another lesson from the textbooks features a young boy speaking with his grandfather about the “crimes of the Zionists in Palestine,” which are presented as the outcome of inherent Jewish malice across the centuries.

“The Zionists are the enemies of humanity in the past, present, and future because of their attributes: deceit, treason, treachery, and breaking pacts,” the grandfather explains.

Weinberg said, “you can’t convince someone to give up his/her life for terrorism against Jews and the Jewish State and America without systematically teaching that person from a young age that the Jews, Israel, and America are his/her enemies.”

“Hezbollah’s anti-Semitic indoctrination of schoolchldren is deeply-rooted, complex and dangerous,” he emphasized in the report.  

(thealgemeiner.com)

 

Report: Iran Tested Long-Range Cruise Missiles

Iran tested long-range cruise missiles, according to a report by the state-run IRNA news agency.  The missiles were fired in June during a naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman and the northern Indian Ocean.

They reportedly destroyed targets at a distance of 170 miles.

IRNA further stated that the missiles’ range could be extended and that two types of missiles were tested, though it did not provide additional details.

Images were broadcast of missiles launched on land from a truck and at sea from a ship.

Admiral Hossein Khanzadi, the commander of the Iranian navy told state TV that the “homing” c-class cruise missiles have new warheads that can strike with high accuracy and that the missiles are capable of resisting “any kind of electronic warfare.”

“The important point about these missiles is that they are fully equipped with homing capabilities.” Khanzadi said.  “It means they are of the fire-and-forget-type.  We fire the missile and the data is on the missile itself, it has various navigation systems built-in.”

The missile test was the first of its kind since 19 Iranian sailors were killed in a similar drill last month when an Iranian Jamaran frigate accidentally fired on a Konarak support ship with an anti-ship cruise missile during naval exercises.  

(israelnn.com)

 

Canada: Jews Are Most Targeted Group For Hate Crimes In Toronto

Newly revealed police data shows that Jews were once again the most targeted group for hate crimes in both Toronto and the York Region in 2019.

These numbers are consistent with what was recently reported in B’nai Brith Canada’s 2019 Annual Audit of Anti-Semitic incidents, which found an alarming 62.8 percent increase in the number of incidents in Ontario compared to the previous year.

In total, 44 out of 139 hate-related incidents recorded in the city of Toronto last year targeted the Jewish community amounting to 32% of all hate crimes.

The Toronto Police Service (TPS) record incidents targeting Israelis separately from incidents targeting Jews, noting there were five of the former.  With Israelis and multi-bias cases included, the total number of incidents involving anti-semitism in Toronto adds up to about 57, or 41 percent of the city’s hate crimes.

Meanwhile, in the nearby York Region, Jews were targeted in 40 out of 133 total recorded incidents, amounting to 40 percent of all incidents there.

Despite Jews making up only a fraction of the populations in these municipalities, this is far from the first time anti-Semitism has disproportionately appeared.  Canadian Jews have been the country’s most targeted minority for the past three consecutive years according to government data.

“We are sad to see that the trends we’ve been warning of for some time now are coming to fruition, and the alarming rise of anti-Semitism is continuing to expand,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada.

“We call on all levels of government to recognize this problem and combat it immediately by adopting B’nai Brith’s Eight-Point Plan to Tackle Anti-Semitism,” he added.

(worldisraelnews.com)