Members of the Hezbollah movement in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh, Nov. 8, 2017. (Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a simple, straightforward message this week when he toured Israel’s border with Syria and Lebanon with top security officials.
“Our face is turned toward peace, we are ready for any eventuality, and I don’t suggest anyone test us,” he said Tuesday in a video message he posted on Twitter, the sound of helicopter blades whirring in the background.
I am now concluding the tour of IDF Northern Command that we held with the members of the Security Cabinet. I am impressed by the major work the IDF is doing to defend our borders and our state.
African migrants protest against Israel’s ‘racist’ deportations
Wed Feb 7, 2018 05:35PM
African migrants and Israeli activists demonstrate outside the Embassy of Rwanda in Israel on February 7, 2018, against the Israeli plan to forcibly deport African refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda and Uganda. (Photo by AFP)
Thousands of African migrants have staged a protest outside the Rwandan Embassy in Israel against a “racist” Israeli plan to deport them to the African country.
During the Wednesday protest, the demonstrators urged Rwanda and its President Paul Kagame not to cooperate with Israel on the plan.
“Kagame — We are not for sale,” said one banner held by the demonstrators. “Prison or Deportation? What would you choose?” said another.
Earlier in January, Israel started the implementation of a plan to deport nearly 38,000 migrants who had entered the occupied territories, mainly Eritreans and Sudanese, threatening to detain those who refuse to leave. The refugees say they fled from danger at home.
Under the first stage of deportations, Israeli officials on Sunday began notifying “between 15,000 and 20,000” African men that they have until the end of March to leave the occupied territories or face jail. The migrants will reportedly be deported to Rwanda or Uganda, according to testimonies of people who have already left as well as aid workers.
African migrants demonstrate with white paint on their faces outside the Embassy of Rwanda in Israel on February 7, 2018, against an Israeli plan to forcibly deport African refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda and Uganda. (Photo by AFP)
The protesters also denounced the plan as “racist,” carrying banners reading, “Would you deport me if I was white?” Click here for the full story
From PressTV
Israel border wall ‘act of aggression’: Lebanon
Wed Feb 7, 2018 05:29PM
Israeli workers erect a separation wall in the border area of Metula, seen from the southern village of Kfar Kila, Lebanon, May 3, 2012. (Photo by the Daily Star)
Israel’s plan to construct a security wall on the border with Lebanon amounts to an “act of aggression” and would not go unanswered, Lebanon’s top council of political, military and security heads has warned.
Headed by President Michel Aoun, the Higher Defense Council held an extraordinary session on Wednesday to address territorial spats with the Israeli regime, including the wall and an ongoing disagreement over Mediterranean oil and gas reserves.
“A decision was made to give orders to counter any Israeli attempt to build a wall along the Lebanese border as well acting on all levels to counter Israeli statements surrounding Block 9,” the council said in a strong statement, referring to a disputed gas and oil exploration block in the Mediterranean.
“We grant the army forces with the political backing to act against any Israeli aggression on the border—on land and at sea,” it added.
Lebanon says the wall violates its sovereignty by passing through territory that belongs to the country but is located on the other side of a UN-designated Blue Line, which sets the limits for Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
Israel waged two all-out wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006 but fell short of its military objectives in both cases in the face of strong resistance by Hezbollah and the Lebanese army.
Syria air defenses respond to new Israeli aggression near Damascus: Army
Wed Feb 7, 2018 05:12AM
The file photo of a Syrian air defense system
The Syrian army says its air defenses intercepted several missiles fired by Israeli warplanes towards a military position near the capital, Damascus.
In a statement carried by state media on Wednesday, the army said the Israeli aircraft used Lebanese airspace for the missile strikes.
Loud blasts were heard in Damascus at around 3:30 a.m. local time.
“Our air defense systems blocked them and destroyed most of them,” said the statement.
“The general command of the armed forces holds Israel fully responsible for the dangerous consequences for its repeated, aggressive and uncalculated adventures,” it added.
The new Israeli act of aggression was first reported by state media, which said the missiles had been aimed at a scientific research center in Jamraya village. Click here for the full story
Ukraine passed a law in 2015 that celebrates the legacy of “anti-communist partisans.” Some of them murdered Jewish and Polish citizens while collaborating with Nazi Germany. (Wikimedia Commons)
(JTA) — In 2015, Ukraine’s president signed a law whose critics say stifles debate on the historical record of World War II and whitewashes local perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Law 2538-1 criminalized any rhetoric insulting to the memory of anti-communist partisans. And it celebrates the legacy of such combatants – ostensibly including the ones who murdered countless Jewish and Polish citizens while collaborating with Nazi Germany.
The law generated some backlash, including an open letter by more than 70 historians who said it “contradicts the right to freedom of speech,” ignores complicity in the Holocaust and would “damage Ukraine’s national security.”
But as with similar measures in Europe’s ex-communist nations, the Ukraine law generated little opposition or even attention internationally — especially when compared to the loud objections to a similar measure in Poland that was signed into law on Tuesday by the president. The law had passed both houses of parliament in recent days. The United States and Israel joined historians and Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust authority in decrying the bill. Click here for the full story
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Polish president signs bill on Holocaust rhetoric, drawing rebuke from US
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda giving a press conference in Warsaw to announce his plans to sign into law a controversial Holocaust bill which has sparked tensions with Israel, Feb. 6, 2018. (Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) – Polish President Andrzej Duda signed and finalized a law limiting rhetoric about the Holocaust, leading to a rebuke from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The United States is “disappointed,” Tillerson said Tuesday, following Duda’s final approval of a law introduced on Jan. 26 in the Polish parliament. It prescribes up to six years in prison to anyone who blames the Polish state or nation for crimes the law says were perpetrated exclusively by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The “enactment of this law adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry,” Reuters reported Tillerson as saying. Click here for the full story
Syrian special forces investigating downed Russian jet in Idlib
Sun Feb 4, 2018 11:58PM
A picture taken on February 3, 2018, shows the wing of a downed Sukhoi-25 fighter jet in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib. (Photo by AFP)
Syrian special forces have launched an investigation in the area where a Russian Su-25 jet was recently shot down by a MANPAD rocket.
“The group that had the MANPAD has been destroyed by the Russian Air Force. Now the Syrian commandos are working on the ground. If they find elements of that launcher, we could trace its serial number and establish its origin to the factory in a few days, find out how it got there,” said Russian Member of Parliament Vikotor Volodarsky on Sunday.
Senior Russian lawmakers have also urged the country to probe the origin of the man-portable air-defense system, which was reportedly used to down the Russian jet.
Preliminary data showed the jet had been downed by a MANPAD. The pilot had parachuted down into the area controlled by Jabhat Fateh al-Sham Takfiri outfit, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, but was killed during a confrontation with militants from an unspecified group. Click here for the full story
