Israeli PM confirms weekend strikes in Syria against Iran | NZ Herald

Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel’s prime minister says the country struck an Iranian weapons storage facility over the weekend at the Damascus International Airport.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments on Sunday at his weekly Cabinet meeting mark a rare public acknowledgement of Israeli activity in Syria. Advertisement

Israel is believed to have carried out hundreds of airstrikes against Iranian and Hezbollah targets throughout the Syrian civil war but has generally refrained from commenting about them for fear of being drawn into the fighting.

Only recently has it begun to speak publicly about thwarting the weapons smuggling from Iran through Styria into Lebanon. Israel’s outgoing military chief, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, did so over the weekend in various interviews.

Netanyahu says Israel says the recent strikes prove “we are committed more than ever to act against Iran in Syria.”

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Malaysia says it won’t host any more events involving Israel | NZ Herald

Saifuddin Abdullah, Foreign Minister of Malaysia

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s foreign minister says the government will not budge over a ban on Israeli athletes in a para swimming competition and has decided that the country will not host any events in the future involving Israel.

Malaysia, a strong supporter of the Palestinian plight, is among the predominantly Muslim countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. The government has said Israeli swimmers cannot join the competition in July that serves as a qualifying event for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.

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Palestinians elected to lead UN G77 and announce plans to again seek full UN membership | NZ Herald

Mahmoud Abbas

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday he plans to reactivate an application for the Palestinians to have full membership in the United Nations, and his foreign minister said that will likely happen in a few weeks.

Abbas made the announcement just before he took over as head of the key group of developing countries at the United Nations with a promise to confront “assaults” on multilateralism and a pledge to seek a peaceful two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Controversial ‘Secret Hitler’ board game for sale in New Zealand | NewsHub

Adolf Hitler

The board game based on Adolf Hitler’s reign that’s causing outrage in Australia is also available in New Zealand.

Secret Hitler has led to about 10 complaints to the Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) in Australia after it was stocked on major Australian retailer shelves.

However it’s also for sale here on Trade Me and online gaming retailers.

The product states it is a social deduction game for up to 10 people to find and stop the ‘Secret Hitler’ among the two teams of liberals and fascists.

But a daughter of a Holocaust survivor says she shook when she saw the game in a Melbourne store.

“I started shaking, I literally saw the Holocaust flash in front of me. I felt as if there were Nazis about to storm into the store. I could barely look at the shopkeeper,” she wrote in her complaint.

“I felt anti-Semitism alive. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

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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.

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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.”

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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
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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.

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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
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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.”

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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.

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