Israel finds last tunnel, ending mission on Lebanese border | NZ Herald

Hezbollah’s tunnels

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli troops discovered the sixth and final tunnel dug by Hezbollah militants for cross-border attacks, the military announced Sunday, saying it was wrapping up its operation along the Lebanese border.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the final tunnel was the largest one discovered so far, running hundreds of meters (yards) from under a Lebanese home and deep into Israeli territory. Israel launched the “Operation Northern Shield” early last month to detect and destroy what it called a vast network of Hezbollah tunnels aimed for militants to sneak across the border and carry out attacks.

Read more

Ohio doctor fired for anti-Semitic tweets, including threats to give Jews “the wrong meds” | CBS

Lara Kollab

A prominent hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, fired a first-year resident after discovering anti-Semitic comments in her social media posts.

Lara Kollab worked as a first-year resident at the Cleveland Clinic from July to September 2018. She has since deleted all of her social media, but screenshots of her posts — dating back to 2011 — have been documented by the Canary Mission, a site dedicated to exposing anti-Semitism in an effort to combat its rise on college campuses.

According to the Canary Mission, Kollab’s posts called for violence against Jews, defended Hamas, trivialized the Holocaust and repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany. The group saved dozens of similar posts from 2011-2017. 

In one now-deleted tweet from 2012, Kollab said, “ill purposely give all the yahood the wrong meds…” Yahood is an Arabic term for Jewish people. Other tweets made reference to “Jewish dogs” and said in Arabic, “Allah will take the Jews.”

Read more

Nike shares tumble day after LeBron James ‘Jewish money’ Instagram apology | NZ Herald

LeBron James

Nike shares fell as much as 4.5 per cent on Monday, the most in more than two months, erasing part of the gain that followed strong earnings results.

The world’s biggest sports apparel and footwear company tumbled as low as $69.14 in New York, the biggest intraday loss since October 10.

LeBron James, one of the company’s biggest stars, apologized on Sunday for posting a lyric about “Jewish money” on his Instagram account. More about
A UK translation company and a translation provider with global reach

The dip followed a surge last Friday after Nike posted second-quarter earnings that beat estimates, including strong sales growth in the company’s two most important markets: North America and China. It was Nike’s first earnings report since it featured controversial quarterback-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick in its newest “Just Do It” ad campaign.

Read more

Christians living in Israel | J-Wire

The Christian population grew in 2017  by 2.2%, compared with 1.4% in the previous year.

The majority (77.7%) of the country’s Christian population are Arab (133,000) with Arab Christians constituting 7.3% of the total Arab population in Israel

Nearly one quarter (22.3%) of the Christian population in Israel are non-Arab Christians – 38.3 thousand, most of them immigrated to Israel with Jewish family members under the Law of Return (including their children born in Israel) since the 1990s.

Most of the Arab Christian population  (70.6 percent) live in the northern part of Israel mostly in  Nazareth (22.1 thousand) and Haifa (15,800). Around 9.6% of the Christian Arab population (12,600) live in the Jerusalem district.

The geographical distribution of non-Arab Christian population differs from that of the Arab Christians: 40.9% live in the Tel Aviv and Central Districts, 33.8% in the Northern District and Haifa District. There are 4,000 Christians in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 3,700 in Haifa 3.7 and 3,200 in  Jerusalem.

According to the Tourism Ministry, Israel welcomed some 150,000 Christians for the festive season to celebrate Christmas in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and to spend the Christmas period in the Holy Land, closing out a record year for tourism in Israel with almost  4 million people entering the country on tourist visas.

In 2018 more than half of the tourists who visited Israel were Christian, making a  significant contribution to incoming tourism kindly visit us
Top Sites WebWorthChecker.Com

Source

Netanyahu: Trump withdrawal from Syria won’t affect us | NZ Herald

Donald Trump

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s leader says the American decision to withdraw its forces from Syria will not affect Israeli policy.

Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will “continue to act against Iran’s attempts to entrench itself militarily in Syria, and to the extent necessary, we will even expand our actions there.”

Israel, like others, was caught off-guard by President Donald Trump’s abrupt move to withdraw all the roughly 2,000 U.S. forces from Syria in the coming weeks. The announcement sparked the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group. Several Republicans said leaving Syria was an abandonment of American allies, such as Israel.

Netanyahu, who flaunts a good rapport with Trump, says Sunday “cooperation with the U.S. will continue in full.”

Read more

Israel urges UN to condemn Hezbollah over tunnels | NZ Herald

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel on Wednesday urged a special session of the U.N. Security Council to condemn the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and designate it a terrorist organization following the discovery of cross-border tunnels stretching into Israel.

Following a stormy session, the council took no action on the Israeli request, though several members sided with Israel and expressed concerns over Hezbollah’s violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution that ended a 2006 war between the bitter enemies.

Read more

Verses and Reality – What the Koran really says about Jews | AIR

The question of the Koran’s attitude toward Jews is not merely a theoretical-academic matter. Because of the centrality of the Koran in the life of the Muslim and of Muslim communities past and present, this question has had, and still has in our day, a fundamental influence on the formation of attitudes toward Jews. True, this is not the only factor and more everyday ones also come into play. But the topic remains an important one to study and become familiar with.

Read more

By their tweets you shall know them | AIR

There is evidence that the traditional human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have gone badly off the rails – especially, but not only, with respect to Israel. It is clear they are often no longer applying international human rights law without fear or favour, but are instead increasingly letting their “findings” be influenced by left-wing orthodoxies about imperialism, colonialism, and structural racism rooted in power imbalances. 

Their overall bodies of reports and official press releases are usually written in a way to provide plausible deniability. They concentrate mainly on the targets they want to attack in the name of these orthodoxies– such as Israel and Western governments and their allies – but include enough material on their enemies to claim they are willing to criticise all sides. 

But if you look at the tweets their officials put out you see the true picture. 

Read more

Australia recognises west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital | NZ Herald

Australia has decided to formally recognise west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but won’t move its embassy until there’s a peace settlement between Israel and Palestinians, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Saturday.

He said in a speech that Australia will recognise east Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital only after a settlement has been reached on a two-state solution. The Australian Embassy won’t be moved from Tel Aviv until such a time, he said.

While the embassy move is delayed, Morrison said his government will establish a defense and trade office in Jerusalem and will also start looking for an appropriate site for the embassy.

“The Australian government has decided that Australia now recognises west Jerusalem, as the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of government, is the capital of Israel,” Morrison said. He said the decision respects both a commitment to a two-state solution and longstanding respect for relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Read more

Lebanese wary as Israel destroys Hezbollah border tunnels | NZ Herald

MAYS AL-JABAL, Lebanon (AP) — As Israeli excavators dug into the rocky hills along the frontier with a Lebanese village, a crowd of young Lebanese men gathered to watch.

The mood was light as the crowd observed what Israel says is a military operation — dubbed “Northern Shield” — aimed at destroying attack tunnels built by the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. The young men posed for selfies, with the Israeli crew in the background, as they burned fires and brewed tea to keep warm. More about
jar finance

But Lebanese soldiers were visibly on high alert, deploying to new camouflaged posts behind sandbags and inside abandoned homes. About two dozen U.N. peacekeepers stood in a long line, just ahead of the blue line demarcating the frontier between the two countries technically still at war.

The scene highlights the palpable anxiety that any misstep could lead to a conflagration between Israel and Lebanon that no one seems to want.

Read more