From PressTV
No home rebuilt in Gaza after 2014 Israel war : UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) says no house has been reconstructed in the besieged Gaza Strip eight months after the end of the Israeli regime’s latest war on the blockaded area.
“Not a single home has been rebuilt” in the besieged Gaza Strip since the end of the Israeli military’s devastating offensive against the territory in the summer of 2014, said UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness on Thursday.
The Israeli regime started its latest war on Gaza in early July last year. The offensive ended on August 26 with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
“To date, 9,161 Palestine refugee houses have been considered totally destroyed and 5,066 have suffered severe, 4,085 major and 124,782 minor damages,” Gunness added.
He further said that the UN agency has received “funding to reconstruct 200 of the 9,161 houses totally destroyed.”
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From PressTV
Israeli tanks shell northern Gaza Strip
Israeli tanks have shelled an area in the northern Gaza Strip following a claim by the Israeli military that a rocket was fired from the Palestinian enclave toward Israel.
Palestinian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the shelling targeted an open area near Beit Hanoun city late on Thursday night.
Israeli media had initially reported that Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes against Gaza.
There were no immediate reports about the possible casualties and damage from the Israeli shelling.
The Israeli military claimed that the shelling was carried out a few hours after a rocket fired from the impoverished Palestinian coastal sliver hit an open field in Sha’ar HaNegev. No injuries or damages were reported from the alleged Palestinian rocket fire.
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From PressTV
Gaza on verge of humanitarian crisis over Israeli siege
The Palestinian Health Ministry has warned of a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip due to Israel’s crippling blockade on the impoverished coastal enclave.
The ministry says a shortage of drugs and medical supplies at hospitals and medical centers has been critically aggravated over Israel’s blockade on the coastal sliver for the past eight years.
According to Ashraf Abu Mahady, the director general of pharmacy in the ministry, Gaza now lacks 118 kinds of medicines and 334 types of medical disposals.
The official urged international bodies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization, to exert pressure on the Israeli regime to lift the blockade and open Gaza crossings.
The Gaza Strip has been under a crippling Israeli siege since 2007. The blockade, which has cut off the territory from the outside world, has led to an economic and humanitarian crisis in the densely-populated enclave.
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From Russia Today
US military instructors in eastern Ukraine combat zone – Russian military
The Russian Defense Ministry said the US military instructors have been spotted in the combat zone in eastern Ukraine, training the country’s National Guard in the field, despite promises to hold the exercises at a remote range in Lvov.
Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov slammed Washington’s claims of increased presence of Russian air defense units in the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions of Ukraine as “astonishing in its incompetence,” TASS reported.
On Wednesday, US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said that it’s currently “the highest amount of Russian air defense equipment in eastern Ukraine since August,” without providing any evidence to substantiate the claim.
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
U.S. accidentally killed Jewish hostage in al-Qaida raid, White House says
(JTA) – U.S. forces accidentally killed Warren Weinstein, the Jewish-American government contractor who had been held hostage by al-Qaida since 2011, the White House acknowledged.
Weinstein was killed along with Italian hostage Giovanni Lo Porto, held captive since 2012, in a drone strike in January in which U.S. forces targeted an al-Qaida-linked compound in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, the White House said Thursday in a statement.
U.S. forces did not know the two hostages were present and President Barack Obama “takes full responsibility” for their deaths, the statement said.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Brazilian Jews lobby in favor of controversial anti-terror bill
(JTA) — Brazil’s Jewish defense minister, Jaques Wagner, told local Jews that he supports passing controversial anti-terrorist legislation favored by their community’s leadership.
Wagner, who was made minister in December, confirmed his support for the bill during a meeting last week in Brasilia with Fernando Lottenberg, president of the CONIB umbrella group representing communities and groups belonging to Brazil’s Jewish community, CONIB wrote in a statement Wednesday.
Proponents of the bill, initiated in 2013 by coalition senators, say it is necessary because it will empower authorities to crack down on terrorist groups before they actually carry out violence — for example at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Citing the absence of definitions for what constitutes terrorism, activists and other critics worry it could be abused to stifle dissent at a time when Brazil’s cities repeatedly are being rocked by street riots over perceived failures in government spending, including on the Olympics.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Obama: Meeting with Netanyahu only after nuke talks deadline
(JTA) — President Barack Obama reportedly said he will not meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the June 30 deadline for the Iran nuclear talks.
Obama told Jewish leaders last week that a face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu would probably end with Netanyahu publicly complaining about the president’s policies on Iran, unnamed sources familiar with the meeting told The New York Times.
For now, the president said, he would speak with Netanyahu over the telephone and an Oval Office invitation would wait until after the deadline for negotiating the details of the Iran deal, according to the Times article published Thursday.
The meeting came amid a White House push to tamp down its confrontations with Israel following a rare flash of public exasperation with an ally, the Times reported.
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From PressTV
Palestinians rally in occupied lands to mark Nakba Day
Thousands of Palestinians living in occupied territories have held rallies to mark the 67th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) Day, when Israeli forces displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land.
The protesters, carrying Palestinian flags, gathered in some regions in the northern parts of the occupied lands on Thursday.
“Our grandfathers who suffered displacement asked us not to sell our land and to return to it and not give up,” activist Hammad Abu al-Haija told a crowd of demonstrators.
“Now we tell our children and our grandchildren not to do so,” he said.
They called for the liberation of their land and the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were forced out of their homes by Israel in 1948.
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From PressTV
Palestinians condemn Israeli ruling on al-Quds property
Palestinians have condemned an Israeli court approval of a controversial law that allows the Tel Aviv regime to confiscate Palestinian property in East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
Mohannad Gebara, a lawyer representing Palestinians, criticized the ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court to approve the contested Absentee Property Law.
He the law is intended “to seize the property of Palestinian refugees… and to legalize the seizure of Palestinian assets.”
“The law determines that property in East [al-Quds] Jerusalem belonging to a Palestinian living in Hebron (al-Khalil) or Ramallah has to be seized by Israel if he was at the time of the Israeli occupation in Ramallah or Hebron or any other city or area of the West Bank,” he told a press conference on Thursday.
Gebara added that the Israeli regime “has also seized several plots of land and thousands of items, contrary to international law.”
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From The Times of Israel
Obama’s 67 degrees of separation from Israel
Op-Ed: As Israel turns 67 in the vicious, unstable Middle East, the current US administration has proved a vital ally. But ties could and should have been closer
The United States has long been Israel’s most important ally. It is a partner whose support is central to the capacity of tiny Israel — insignificant demographically, and only nine miles wide at its narrowest point — to survive in the vicious Middle East.
Israel, for its part, is the sole dependable democratic ally that the United States has in this part of the world, its 8.3 million people on the front line of the battle against tyrannical regimes and expansionist Islamic extremism.
That’s why any daylight in the relationship between the two countries is deeply disquieting for most Israelis and many Americans, and a source of encouragement to Israel’s enemies.
The Obama administration has been deeply supportive of Israel in innumerable ways. It has provided firm diplomatic backing — even in areas where it disagrees with Israel, such as over the settlement enterprise. Time and again, the US has voted with Israel and/or to protect Israel at the United Nations and in the UN’s various forums, some of them strategically and obsessively hostile to Israel.
Under Obama, the US has ensured that Israel preserves its crucial qualitative military edge over enemies and potential enemies, maintaining military aid even in years of severe financial crisis. The two countries have worked intimately to develop cutting edge defensive weapons systems, and even at the height of domestic US political tension and paralysis, the administration proved willing and able to ensure further emergency funding for the Iron Dome rocket defense shield.
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From The Times of Israel
Israel grapples with question of Armenian genocide recognition
Amid frayed ties with Turkey, many say values must trump interests in acknowledging ‘first genocide of 20th century’
AP — The Nazi genocide of European Jews is widely commemorated in Israel and etched deeply into the psyche of a country founded in the Holocaust’s aftermath. But when it comes to the 1915 Armenian genocide, Israel has largely stayed silent.
Fearing repercussions from its former ally Turkey and wary of breaking ranks with American policy, Israel has refrained from calling the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I a genocide. Now, days before Armenia holds centenary commemorations, and with ties to Turkey frayed, there are growing calls from within Israel to finally do so.
Nachman Shai (photo credit: Flash90)
In a first of its kind gesture, Israel is dispatching a pair of lawmakers to the ceremony in Yerevan on Friday. However, the low-level delegation is under strict instructions to refer to the killings as a “national tragedy” rather than “genocide.” One of those backbenchers, Nachman Shai of the centrist Zionist Union party, said it was time for Israel to acknowledge that genocide took place.
“In foreign policy, there are interests and there are values,” he told The Associated Press. “In this case I think values should trump interests. As Jews, we must recognize it.”
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From The Times of Israel
EU to weigh military action to curb illegal immigration
After deadly shipwreck, European leaders will consider granting legal entry to just 5,000 migrants
EU leaders gathering in Brussels on Thursday will consider limiting the number of migrants allowed into Europe to just 5,000 — far shy of the 150,000 who attempted to enter the continent last year.
The summit will also weigh the possibility of launching a military operation against human traffickers in Libya, in a bold effort to halt the deadly flow of refugees trying to reach Europe by sea.
As survivors laid bare the full horror of last weekend’s catastrophic shipwreck near Libya, a draft statement for the summit seen by AFP committed leaders to “undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers.”
The EU’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini “is invited to immediately begin preparations for a possible security and defense policy operation to this effect, in accordance with international law,” the draft added.
A diplomatic source said EU members were preparing to approve the statement, reflecting the union’s readiness to take more decisive action against people smugglers, who pack rickety boats to overflying with people fleeing conflict and hardship in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
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From The Times of Israel
Amnesty International rejects call to fight anti-Semitism
Human rights group says it opposes campaign focused specifically on anti-Jewish discrimination rather than prejudice generally
Amnesty International rejected a motion to campaign against the rise in anti-Semitism in Britain, saying it battles all discrimination and would not single out individual groups, the British Jewish newspaper The Jewish Chronicle reported Tuesday.
The resolution called for the group to “campaign against antisemitism in the UK and lobby the government to tackle the rise in attacks.” It was struck down 468 to 461 at the group’s annual general meeting at the beginning of the week, the report said.
“It was the only resolution to be defeated during the whole conference,” said Andrew Thorpe-Apps, who submitted the motion in March after becoming concerned over press reports of rising anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom.
“I’ve been appalled by what I’ve seen in the press facing the Jewish community and an organization like Amnesty should really add their voice to that as they do with other human rights issues,” said Thorpe-Apps, who is not Jewish.
The group defended the rejection. “After a really interesting debate where everyone condemned discrimination against all ethnic and religious groups, our membership decided not to pass this resolution calling for a campaign with a single focus,” said Amnesty International UK press officer Neil Durkin.
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