Israel, U.S., Canada to hold joint aerial anti-terror drill
(JNS.org) Israel, the United States, and Canada will hold a joint aerial exercise this summer to improve coordination in preventing terror attacks on civilian aircrafts, Israel Hayom reported.
The exercise will be the first of its kind. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said the drill would allow the three countries to “react more effectively” to threats of terrorism against civilian planes.
Katz said cooperation in this realm is of “inimitable importance.”
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Renowned Israeli actor, director, screenwriter Assi Dayan dies
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Renowned Israeli director and screenwriter Assi Dayan died in his Tel Aviv apartment at the age of 69 on Thursday following a long battle with substance abuse and various health issues.
Dayan, the son of former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, was considered a pioneer of the Israeli film industry. He first won acclaim with his trailblazing acting role in the film “He Walked Through the Fields,” Yossi Milo’s adaptation of Moshe Shamir’s novel and play of the same name. Dayan won eight Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the American Oscars.
In 1976, Dayan wrote and directed the iconic Israeli cult comedy “Givat Halfon Eina Ona” (“Halfon Hill Doesn’t Answer”) about a group of army reservists in Sinai. In 1992 he wrote and directed “Hachayim Al-Pi Agfa” (“Life According to Agfa”), a film portraying life in a Tel Aviv pub.
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Intel to invest $6 billion to upgrade production facility in Israel
(JNS.org) U.S. chipmaker Intel announced on Wednesday that it plans to invest $6 billion to upgrade its facility in southern Israel.
Intel said it planned to “upgrade the Kiryat Gat facility to meet future needs,” but didn’t specify any technical details of the project in the announcement.
Intel, which began operating in Israel in 1974, has four development centers and two production plants in the Jewish state that employ 9,855 people and produce $1 billion annually.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the news of the investment.
“Israel is a focal point of global technology, and investing in it generates profits both to the investors and the citizens of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
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New fatwa permits millions of Muslims to pray at Temple Mount
(JNS.org) A new Islamic fatwa permits millions of Muslims from around the world to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.
The fatwa was issued during a two-day conference in Amman called the “Road to Jerusalem,” attended by more than 150 Islamic scholars as a way of to discuss “defending Islamic and Christian holy sites,” the Jordanian daily Ad-Dustour reported.
The fatwa called “Visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque Under the Occupation” encourages Palestinians who have foreign passports, as well as Muslims who live in non-Islamic countries, to visit the Temple Mount. It cautioned that normalization of the Israeli “occupation” should be avoided, meaning that visitors should only use Palestinian-provided services such as lodging, food, and transportation.
Previous fatwas had prohibited Muslims from around the world from visiting the Temple Mount.
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State Dept. report praises Israel as ‘committed counterterrorism partner’
(JNS.org) The U.S. State Department on Wednesday praised Israel for being committed to fighting terrorism, while also slamming Iran for its continued “state sponsorship of terrorism,” in its latest “Country Reports on Terrorism in 2013.”
The report, issued every year as mandated by Congress, said that terrorist threats continued to “evolve rapidly” in 2013, specifically mentioning the growth of al-Qaeda and its affiliates as posing a “threat to the United States, our allies, and our interests.”
The report lauded Israel as being a “committed counterterrorism partner” and also said Israel continues to face serious terrorist threats from “Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), particularly from Gaza but also from the West Bank; and from Hizballah in Lebanon.”
In particular, the report said that Israel faced a total of 1,271 terrorist attacks originating from the West Bank last year. It also described the continued rocket threats from Gaza and Lebanon.
On Iran, the report said the Islamic Republic’s “state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished” in 2013. It cited Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, its intelligence and security ministry, and its ally Hezbollah as the principle sources of terrorism.
Overall, the State Department said that the Near East “experienced significant levels of terrorist activity in 2013, with instability and weak governance in North Africa, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen continuing to have ramifications for the broader region.”
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J Street decries Conference decision
(JNS.org) After its application to become a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations was rejected, J Street said in a statement, “This is a sad day for us, but also for the American Jewish community and for a venerable institution that has chosen to bar the door to the communal tent to an organization that represents a substantial segment of Jewish opinion on Israel.”
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Temple Mount Jewish prayer could be allowed by new rules
(JNS.org) Israel’s religious affairs ministry is preparing new rules that would allows Jews to pray at the Temple Mount. The rules would reverse the current regulations, established when Israel gained control of the area in 1967, banning Jewish prayer from the site. Jews seen praying there have often been arrested or harassed by Muslims.
“I expect the prime minister and the government of Israel to adopt and validate these regulations and allow all Jews who desire so to go up to the Temple Mount and pray there,” Deputy Religious Affairs Minister Eli Ben-Dahan said in a video address to Liba, an organization supporting Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount.
“I call on the State of Israel and its leaders to act like a democratic state and protect the basic rights of every Jew who goes and prays on the Temple Mount,” said the director of Liba, Yehuda Glick, the Times of Israel reported.
In a separate expression of support for Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount, Christian pastor Keith Johnson urged “the children of Abraham” throughout the world to stand up to harassment at the holy site. When Johnson had visited the site himself and was about to greet Glick, he was surrounded by Waqf guards who forced him away, Israel National News.
“As an American pastor I am appalled by the actions of some Muslims who chastise Jewish visitors—including children—who desire to ascend the Temple Mount,” Johnson said in a recently posted YouTube video.
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Stanley Fischer nomination for Fed vice chairman approved by Senate committee
(JNS.org) The former governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, has been unanimously approved by the Senate Banking Committee as a nominee to take over as vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. The appointment would make Fischer the second-ranked Federal Reserve official after Chairwoman Janet Yellen.
Fischer’s nomination, along with the approved nominations of former Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs Lael Brainard and Fed Governor Jerome Powell for another term, now requires confirmation from the full Senate.
Fischer is a well-known figure in global central banking circles and was a professor for former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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