Netzach Yisrael, Author at Netzach Yisrael

Israel pauses to remember 6 million murdered in Holocaust

Netzach YisraelApril 24, 2017April 24, 2017News

Times of Israel

People stand still on Jaffa Road, central Jerusalem, as a two-minute siren is sounded across Israel to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 24, 2017

Israelis across the country paused for two minutes Monday morning in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered in Europe under Nazi rule as a siren pierced the clear blue sky in an annual marking of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The 10 a.m. siren was to be followed by ceremonies at schools, memorials and elsewhere in honor of those who lost their lives, as well as Shoah survivors.

The country’s central commemoration event got underway immediately after the siren at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, where dignitaries will lay wreaths next to a monument commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.

Netzach YisraelApril 24, 2017News

BBC

Giselle Cycowicz (born Friedman) remembers her father, Wolf, as a warm, kind and religious man. “He was a scholar,” she says, “he always had a book open, studying Talmud [compendium of Jewish law], but he was also a businessman and he looked after his family.”

Before the war, the Friedmans lived a happy, comfortable life in Khust, a Czechoslovak town with a large Jewish population on the fringes of Hungary. All that changed after 1939, when pro-Nazi Hungarian troops, and later Nazi Germany, invaded, and all the town’s Jews were deported to Auschwitz.

Giselle last saw her father, “strong and healthy”, hours after the family arrived at the Birkenau section of the death camp. Wolf had been selected for a workforce but a fellow prisoner under orders would not let her go to him.

“That would have been my chance to maybe kiss him the last time,” Giselle, now 89, says, her voice cracking with emotion.

Netzach YisraelApril 24, 2017News

JNS

President Donald Trump speaks at the Hermitage, home of former President Andrew Jackson, in March. Trump’s presidency was a major subject of discussions at April’s Evangelical Press Association conference.

… “I would say the majority of those who are a part of the EPA really have a commitment and a strong feeling toward Israel, in terms of supporting Israel,” said Jill Daly, the Midwest director for Israel’s Ministry of Tourism, which was a returning EPA conference sponsor.

Many EPA members and conference attendees had visited Israel with Daly on media trips, and she said she looks forward to leading a similar trip this fall. Daly was hopeful that even as anti-Semitism and the BDS movement continue to gain traction on American college campuses, current and future members of the evangelical press—including dozens of student journalists at the EPA conference—would tell a different narrative than what is usually portrayed in mainstream media.

Netzach YisraelApril 24, 2017News

Times of Israel

Interior Affairs Minister and head of the Shas party Aryeh Deri, speaks at El Hama’ayan Passover conference at the Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem on April 13, 2017.

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who heads the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said on Monday that ultra-Orthodox Jews must honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, and not doing so is a “desecration of God’s name.”

Some members of the ultra-Orthodox community refuse to commemorate Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day because it was instituted by a secular Israeli government and is not rooted in the Jewish religious tradition.

In an interview with Israel Radio, Deri, head of Israel’s largest ultra-Orthodox political party, rejected this view and stressed the importance of remembering those who were killed by the Nazis and never forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust.

Netzach YisraelApril 23, 2017News

Times of Israel

Magen David Adom paramedics arrive at the scene of a suspected terror attack outside of a Tel Aviv hotel on April 23, 2017

The Defense Ministry suspended single-day work permits for Palestinians to enter Israel Sunday, hours after a Palestinian teen injured four in a stabbing attack on Tel Aviv’s beachfront.

The attacker, identified as an 18-year-old from the Nablus area of the West Bank, apparently entered Israel with one such pass, as part of a group known as “Natural Peace Tours,” which is supposed to forge relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, a defense official said. He was not named

The ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said the one-day permits granted to different organizations and groups will be “frozen” until an investigation of the matter can be conducted, the official said.

Netzach YisraelApril 23, 2017April 23, 2017News

Reuters

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri speaks during a news conference as UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major-General Michael Beary (L) listens at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters in Naqoura, near the Lebanese-Israeli border, southern Lebanon April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri asked the United Nations on Friday to help Lebanon and Israel move toward a permanent ceasefire and end what he called Israel’s “continuous violations” of Lebanese territory.

Israel and Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah group fought a month-long war in 2006 that concluded with a cessation of hostilities but without a formal peace deal.

“I urge the U.N. secretary general to support efforts to secure, as soon as possible, a state of permanent ceasefire. This is long overdue and my government is committed to move this agenda forward,” Hariri said.

Netzach YisraelApril 21, 2017News

Bloomberg

The $1.4 billion Rawabi development, 25 miles north of Jerusalem

When Bashar Masri wants a sense of the ebb and flow of Israeli-Palestinian relations, he has two options: He can glance out the window or check his bank statement. Masri’s office overlooks Rawabi, a new town 25 miles north of Jerusalem that’s endured years of delays he blames on the Israeli occupation. And the ups and downs of his bank balance reflect the money backers in Qatar are willing to devote to the project—a barometer of the faith Gulf investors have in the Middle East peace process. “Rawabi was built knowing today’s politics and the high risks involved,” Masri says, sitting at a desk cluttered with maps and blueprints in the prefabricated building where he manages the development.

The project offers stark evidence of the perils of doing business in the occupied territories. Rawabi was conceived in 2010 as a magnet for upwardly mobile Palestinians eager to leave their dusty villages and crumbling cities. It was expected to take five years and cost $750 million to build, but the opening date has been repeatedly pushed back, and the final price tag is likely to hit $1.4 billion, as Masri says he’s battled Israel over water hookups, links to the electric grid, and access for construction vehicles. While violence in the West Bank and war in Gaza have halted construction on several occasions, the goal is to create something that’s “occupation-proof,” says Masri, 56, a scion of a wealthy Palestinian family. He estimates his investors will sustain a $100 million loss if there’s no progress toward peace but could turn a profit if the two sides reach a resolution. “We are building Rawabi to survive under the current difficult circumstances,” he says. “But obviously we hope for better days.”

Netzach YisraelApril 21, 2017News

JNS

Recent admissions by The New York Times and The Washington Post of errors in their coverage of Israel are rare exceptions to the “culture” of anti-Israel bias that permeates both newspapers, media watchdogs say.

The Times admitted April 16 it was wrong not to mention Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti’s five murder convictions in the biographical line of his recent op-ed. In March, the Times acknowledged that an unsigned editorial erred in claiming the U.S. has always viewed Israeli settlement construction as “illegal.”

Meanwhile, The Washington Post April 17 published a rare correction on its op-ed page. The one-paragraph item stated, “The March 28 Richard Cohen op-ed, ‘Will Israel Win the West Bank but Lose its Soul?,’ incorrectly stated that Israel reserves some roads for Jews only. The country closes some roads to virtually all Palestinians, but they are open to all Israeli citizens and to other nationals, regardless of religious background.”

Netzach YisraelApril 21, 2017April 21, 2017News

JTA

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaking at a Security Council meeting in New York City, April 12, 2017

A number of Arab states heeded the plea by Nikki Haley, the U.N. ambassador to the United Nations, to focus more in a Middle East debate on the threat posed by Iran than on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Haley, this month the president by rotation of the U.N. Security Council, convened a council session on the Middle East.

“How one chooses to spend one’s time is an indication of one’s priorities,” she said in her opening remarks.

Netzach YisraelApril 20, 2017News

Reuters

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with AFP news agency in Damascus

Israel’s military said on Wednesday it believes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces still possess several tonnes of chemical weapons, issuing the assessment two weeks after a chemical attack that killed nearly 90 people in Syria.

Israel, along with many countries, blames the strike on Assad’s military. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said French intelligence services would provide proof of that in the coming days.

A senior Israeli military officer, in a briefing to Israeli reporters, said “a few tonnes of chemical weapons” remained in the hands of Assad’s forces, a military official told Reuters.

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