Jordanian UN official Rima Khalaf who heads the Beirut-based U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
The head of a Lebanon-based United Nations agency that promotes development in Arab countries resigned Friday, after the body she led was ordered by the UN secretary-general to remove from its website a controversial report that charged Israel has established an “apartheid regime” guilty of “racial domination” over the Palestinians.
Rima Khalaf, a Jordanian who served as executive secretary of the Beirut-based Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), announced her resignation at a hastily arranged press conference in the Lebanese capital.
She said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s insistence that the document be removed from the agency’s website led her to quit.
“The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw (the report). I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN,” Khalaf said.
Jason Greenblatt, the US administration’s Special Envoy for International Negotiations, with members of the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land at a gathering at the US Consulate-General in Jerusalem, March 16, 2017
Jason Greenblatt, the US administration’s Special Envoy for International Negotiations, on Thursday met with senior Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders in Jerusalem, reportedly calling the meeting “the most important” of his visit.
Greenblatt — a close confidant of US President Donald Trump — hosted the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land at the US Consulate-General in Jerusalem just before he met for a second time this week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to one participant, Greenblatt said the 90-minute encounter, attended by both Israeli chief rabbis and the chief justice of the Palestinian Authority’s Sharia court, was the most important meeting of his weeklong tour through the region.
“The leaders agreed that the search for peace must be governed by respect for life and human dignity for all people; to work together for peace, reconciliation, and a just solution; and to reject all incitement to violence,” said a statement released by the US Embassy in Tel Aviv.
By Nicholas Blanford: Having successfully propped up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against an array of armed rebel groups for more than six years, Iran appears to be preparing the ground for a long-term presence in the war-ravaged country, causing rising alarm in neighboring Israel, its bitter foe, and garnering the attention of Washington.
Iran has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buttress Syria’s economy, oversees a multinational Shiite militia force to bolster Mr. Assad’s flagging army, and trains Syrian militia networks based on Iran’s Basij paramilitary volunteer force.
But Iran’s success and expanding reach into Syria, which serves as Tehran’s vital geopolitical link to its client Hezbollah in Lebanon, has made Syria potentially a key arena if the US wants to undermine Iran’s regional stance, analysts say.
As a consequence, President Trump’s administration has signaled an intention to roll back the Islamic Republic’s influence, not only in Syria but elsewhere in the region.
An F-15I fighter jet performs an acrobatic display
The Syrian army said it shot down an Israeli warplane and hit a second one as they were carrying out predawn strikes near the famed desert city of Palmyra on Friday, a claim denied by the Israeli military.
“Our air defense engaged them and shot down one warplane over occupied territory, hit another one, and forced the rest to flee,” the Syrian army said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.
The IDF denied the allegation.
“We repeat, at no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF aircraft compromised,” an army spokesperson said in response to the claim, referring to a statement made earlier on Friday morning.
An Arab lawmaker accused of exploiting his position to smuggle cellphones and notes to convicted Palestinian terrorists signed a plea deal Thursday with prosecutors in which he will resign from the Knesset and serve two years in jail.
According to the deal, MK Basel Ghattas, of the Joint (Arab) List’s Balad faction, will admit in court early next week to charges including smuggling phones into prison, smuggling documents and breach of trust.
Lawyers for both sides will request a jail term of two years and the prosecution will ask that Ghattas be fined.
Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Sprecher at Congregation Bais Moshe Shmiel (Rabbi Rottenberg’s shul) delivering the opening remarks on the 5th day of Iyur, 5774, expressing hakaras ha-tov to HKB”H for the State of Israel
Obituary: Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Sprecher, ztz”l, beloved husband, father, grandfather, doctor and lecturer of Talmud.
The levaya of Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Sprecher took place today at Shomrei HaDa’as in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The speakers included, among others, his brother Mendel, his son, and Rabbi Lipa Geldwerth of Congregation Kol Torah. Sprecher, a prominent radiologist and lecturer of Talmud, passed away the night before on March 15, 2017.
Sprecher, warmly beloved by his community and friends for his care and compassion, gave a daily lecture on Talmud (daf ha-yomi) at Congregation K’hal Sasreganin. He opened his home to Torah scholars who would deliver shiurim and lectures for the community in his spacious library.
Sprecher was an editor of Yeshurin and on the editorial board of Hakirah: The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought. He was also an outspoken advocate for the security of the State of Israel.
He republished, with a new introduction, Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzki’s Sha’alu Shalom Yerushalayim which discusses Friedlaender’s fraudulent mesechtot on Yerushalmi Kodashim.
He was perhaps most widely known for his article in HakirahMezizah be-Peh — Therapeutic Touch or Hippocratic Vestige which reiterated the risks to babies from oral suctioning performed during a brit milah. He also documented the responsa of leading Torah scholars, including the Hatam Sofer, who had ruled that oral suctioning during a brit is not a halakhic requirement.
Sprecher’s intellectual capacity was legendary and his expertise in radiology was sought worldwide including by the late rebbe of Lubavitch, ztz”l as well as by the late rebbe of Gur, the P’nei Menachem, ztz”l.
One of the eulogizers at the levaya spoke about how Sprecher would teach himself foreign languages so that he would be able to read scholarly books published in those languages.
Sprecher was beloved by his family and by his friends for his care and compassion, for his humility, his self-effacement, his sharp intellect and his willingness to advise and help others. He is survived by his wife Matti, his siblings, his children and his grandchildren.
Tempest at U.N. Over Report Saying Israel Practices Apartheid
A Palestinian boy herds his sheep on a field near the West Bank city of Jenin
A United Nations commission said in a report on Wednesday that Israel practices apartheid against Palestinians, a politically explosive assertion that led to furious denunciations by Israel and the United States.
The secretary general of the United Nations quickly disassociated himself from the report, which seemed bound to aggravate the already tense relationship between the world body and the Trump administration.
It also could provide momentum to advocates of an international movement to boycott Israel. Just over a week ago, Israel’s Parliament passed a law barring entry to foreigners who have publicly supported that movement, known as B.D.S. — boycott, divestment and sanctions.
The report was published by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, composed entirely of Arab member states; most do not recognize Israel.
One of the authors of the report was Richard Falk, an American law professor and former United Nations human rights investigator whom critics regard as an anti-Israel extremist. He has been refused entry to Israel for what Israeli leaders have described as his hostile point of view.
Daqamseh welcomed by his family upon his release from prison
On March 12, 2017 Jordanian journalist Basel Al-Rafayeh published an article on his Facebook page and on the Jordanian website Nesannews.com titled “The Deception of Heroism.” Al-Rafayeh attacks those who present Ahmad Al-Daqamseh – who murdered seven Israeli schoolgirls in the Island of Peace in 1997 and was released from prison this week – as a hero. He argues that the murder of young girls is a crime that flies in the face of moral values and is anything but heroic, since Israeli children are not the enemy. He hopes that Al-Daqamseh will be rehabilitated, will understand that his image as a hero is deceitful and will even express remorse for his actions so he can live with himself.
Israeli Air Force jets struck two Hamas installations in the north of the Gaza Strip early Thursday in response to the latest rocket fire from the territory at Israeli communities nearby, the army said.
There were no immediate reports about damage or casualties from the Israeli strike.
Less than two hours before the strike, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in an empty field in the Sdot Negev Regional Council near Netivot.
By Daniel Pipes: “We’re in dire straits,” Jordan’s King Abdullah said half a year ago. After recently completing a week of intensive travels and discussions throughout Jordan, I found no one disagreeing with that assessment. Jordan may no longer be hyper-vulnerable and under siege, as it was in the past, but it does face possibly unprecedented problems.
Created out of thin air by Winston Churchill in 1921 to accommodate British imperial interests, the Emirate of Transjordan, now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, for almost a century has led a precarious existence. Particularly dangerous moments came in 1967, when pan-Arabist pressures led King Hussein to make war on Israel and lose the West Bank; in 1970, when a Palestinian revolt nearly toppled the king; and 1990-1991, when pro-Saddam Hussein sentiments pushed him to join a hopeless and evil cause.
Today’s dangers are manifold. Islamic State lurks in Syria and Iraq, just beyond the border, attractive to a small but real minority of Jordanians. The once-robust trade with those two countries has nearly collapsed — and with it, Jordan’s lucrative transit role. In a region bountiful in oil and gas, Jordan is one of the very few countries to have almost no petroleum resources. City dwellers receive water just one day a week and country dwellers often even less. Tourism has declined, thanks to the Middle East’s notorious volatility. King Abdullah’s recent assertion of authority grates on those demanding more democracy.
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