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Obama: ‘No Basis in Fact’ to Accusations US Orchestrated UN Anti-settlements Vote

hzJanuary 9, 2017January 10, 2017News

JTA

US President Barack Obama

Accusations that the United States orchestrated last month’s U.N. Security Council anti-settlements resolution have no basis in fact, President Barack Obama said. In one of his final interviews as president, Obama spoke to Ilana Dayan, a reporter for Israel’s Channel 2, who has interviewed him in the past. The interview is to be broadcast Tuesday, but Channel 2 teased a portion on Monday.

Dayan asked Obama about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the U.S. abstention allowing through the Security Council resolution was “shameful” and about Israeli ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer’s claim that there was evidence that the Obama administration orchestrated it. “I’ll be honest with you, that kind of hyperbole, those kind of statements, don’t have basis in fact,” Obama said. “They may work well with respect to deflecting attention from the problem of settlements, they may play well with Bibi’s political base as well as the Republican base here in the United States, but they don’t match up with the facts.”

hzJanuary 8, 2017News

Times of Israel

Screen shot from Hamas’s official news site

Hamas slammed the social media giant Facebook for closing down over a hundred pages belonging or sympathetic to the terror group in control of the Gaza Strip.

The closures took place on Thursday, in light of a social media campaign by Hamas to celebrate the man who first manufactured bombs for it in the early 1990s, Yahya Ayyash, known as “the engineer.” Ayyash was assassinated by Israel 21 years ago on Thursday.

hzJanuary 8, 2017News

Algemeiner

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon

The truck-ramming attack in Jerusalem in which four Israeli soldiers were killed on Sunday was “evil and cruelty incarnate,” the Jewish state’s UN envoy said. “This murderous attack is a direct result of murderous Palestinian incitement,” Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon stated. “I call on the secretary-general and the Security Council to condemn this terror attack immediately.”

“The fanatical terrorism that struck in Berlin and Nice did not discriminate in its victims, and neither did the attack in our capital of Jerusalem today,” Danon went on to say.

hzJanuary 8, 2017January 8, 2017News

JTA

Members of ZAKA gather human remains

A truck crashed into a group of soldiers in eastern Jerusalem, killing four and injuring at least 15, in what is suspected to be a terror attack. The soldiers, cadets in an officers’ training course, had just gotten off of a bus on early Sunday afternoon on the promenade in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem, also known as East Talpiot. The promenade marks the border between the eastern and western halves of the city, and is usually full of joggers, walkers and tourists. Four of the soldiers, all [in their] 20[s], were pronounced dead at the scene, according to Magen David Adom. At least one of the injured is in serious condition. The injured soldiers were evacuated to the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Karem and to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. Three of the dead soldiers are reported to be women.

The driver of the truck was shot and killed by shots fired during the attack, when the truck veered from where it was driving and headed for the soldiers, according to reports. Witnesses told Israel Radio that after the truck hit the group of soldiers it accelerated in reverse, trapping more soldiers under the large truck. Reports said the truck had come from the eastern Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber, and had yellow Israeli license plates. The driver was later identified as Fadi al-Qanbar, 28, from Jabel Mukaber. Hamas said he had served time in an Israeli prison.

Hamas praised the attack in a statement posted on the Facebook page of its spokesman. “The continuous operations in the West Bank and Jerusalem prove that the Jerusalem intifada is not an isolated event, but rather a decision by the Palestinian people to revolt until it attains its freedom and liberation from the Israeli occupation,” the post said.

hzJanuary 8, 2017News

Times of Israel

Protesters urging a boycott against Israel in Melbourne

The Modern Language Association, a top American academic group, on Saturday voted down a proposal to boycott Israeli academia. The measure, which was brought to a vote during a convention in Philadelphia, was defeated by 113 to 79.

The boycott initiative was pushed primarily by the group MLA Members for Justice in Palestine. The MLA, in addition to rejecting the motion, approved a separate measure that calls on the association to “refrain from boycotts.”

hzJanuary 6, 2017January 8, 2017News

JTA

Jordan Information Minister Mohammed Momani

Jordan’s government spokesman warned of “catastrophic” repercussions if President-elect Donald Trump moves the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as he indicated he would do. Such a move could affect relations between the United States and regional allies, including Jordan, Information Minister Mohammed Momani told The Associated Press Thursday, addressing the issue publicly for the first time.

Momani, the Jordanian minister, said that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem “will have catastrophic implications on several levels, including the regional situation.” He said countries in the region would likely “think about different things and steps they should take in order to stop this from happening.” An embassy move would be a “red line” for Jordan, would “inflame the Islamic and Arab streets” and serve as a “gift to extremists,” he said, adding that Jordan would use all possible political and diplomatic means to try and prevent such a decision. Jordan is an important U.S. ally in the Middle East.

hzJanuary 5, 2017January 8, 2017News

JTA

U.S. House of Representatives

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly agreed to condemn a U.N. Security Council anti-settlements resolution and the Obama administration for allowing it through. The resolution, which passed Thursday evening by a vote of 342-80, said the Security Council vote last month “undermined the long-standing position of the United States to oppose and veto United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues.”

The Obama administration abstained, refraining from exercising its veto and allowing the Security Council resolution to pass 14-0. U.S. officials said then that they could not endorse the resolution because of the inherent anti-Israel bias of the United Nations, but did not want to veto it because they agreed with its premise that Israeli settlement construction was illegal and an obstruction to advancing peace. Reps. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the committee’s senior Democrat, sponsored the measure.

hzJanuary 4, 2017January 4, 2017News

Sgt. Elor Azaria

The rare manslaughter conviction Wednesday of an Israeli soldier who fatally shot a badly wounded Palestinian attacker exposed a deepening rift between proponents of the rule of law and a burgeoning nationalist movement.

The military court verdict against Sgt. Elor Azaria marked a victory for commanders seeking to preserve a code of ethics, but it also brought calls for a pardon from prominent hard-line politicians, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who expressed sympathy for the soldier or depicted him as the victim of a detached elite. In a statement on Facebook, Netanyahu urged the public to “act responsibly” toward the military, Israel’s most respected institution. “We have one army that is the basis for our existence. IDF soldiers are our sons and daughters, and they must remain above all disputes,” he said. But making no direct mention of the military court, he said: “I support granting a pardon to Elor Azaria.”

hzJanuary 4, 2017News

Times of Israel

Security barrier separating Shuafat from Pisgat Ze’ev.

Israel’s leading security think tank has published a plan to redraw the map of the West Bank in a bid to consolidate major settlements and prevent the spread of others.

The plan, presented Monday to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin as part of the Institute for National Security Studies’ yearly strategic survey, calls for the government to allow construction in West Bank settlement blocs and Jerusalem. At the same time, it recommends a halt to construction in the 90 percent of the territory outside the major settlements.

hzJanuary 4, 2017January 4, 2017News

Times of Israel

US Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida)

Three US senators have introduced legislation that would commit the United States to moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move US presidents have opposed for decades but which President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly signaled he is willing to do.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller (R) proposed the Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act on Tuesday, the first day the new Congress convened on Capitol Hill as Republicans prepare to control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives for the first time since 2007. The measure is similar to a 1995 resolution, led by former House speaker and current Trump confidant Newt Gingrich, that called to move the embassy. It was immediately dismissed by then-president Bill Clinton, who wanted the future status of Jerusalem settled in final negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Obama: ‘No Basis in Fact’ to Accusations US Orchestrated UN Anti-settlements Vote

Facebook Closes Over 100 Hamas-linked Accounts, Angering Terror Group

Israeli Envoy Calls on UN to Condemn ‘Evil’ Jerusalem Truck-Ramming, Blames Deadly Attack on Palestinian Incitement

4 Israeli Soldiers Killed, 15 Injured in Truck Ramming Attack in Eastern Jerusalem

Top American Academic Group Rejects BDS Bid

Jordanian Official: Moving US Embassy to Jerusalem Would be ‘Catastrophic’

House Overwhelmingly Approves Resolution Slamming UN, Obama Administration

Israeli Soldier’s Manslaughter Conviction Divides Country

Israel’s Security Experts Redraw West Bank Map for Trump Era

US Senators Introduce Bill to Recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital, Move Embassy