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March 22, 2017 at 9:47 am
IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot participated on Wednesday morning in a discussion analyzing the State Comptroller's report on 2014's Operation Protective Edge.
State Comptroller Yosef Shapira also participated in the meeting.
At the beginning of the meeting, Eizenkot said, "I see great importance in this process of criticizing and analyzing past decisions. It helps us improve.
"This process of learning lessons from Operation Protective Edge began the moment the operation was finished. We created a number of committees, and the State Comptroller's report added additional insights and provided a plan of action to implement them.
"During Operation Protective Edge, the IDF had to deal with - for the first time - an underground threat of over 30 terror tunnels. A third of th...
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March 22, 2017 at 9:41 am
New York - “Fox & Friends” has emerged as the morning television show of choice for President Donald Trump and his fans, although that may have backfired for Fox News Channel this week.
Like many cable news shows in the Trump era, “Fox & Friends” has seen ratings jump, and not just in the White House. Its average February audience of 1.72 million viewers was 49 percent over last year’s, the Nielsen company said. The show usually has more viewers than MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and CNN’s “New Day” combined.
President Trump’s Twitter feed provides ample evidence of his devotion, too.
Like “Morning Joe,” the political talk show whose love-hate relationship with Trump is clearly set on hate right now, &ld...
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March 22, 2017 at 9:36 am
A Givat Ze’ev resident is ordered to pay NIS 20,000 to another community resident for labeling him a “Nazi” the Jerusalem Magistrate Court ruled in the libel suit filed by attorney Chen Hollander in the name of the plaintiff. The plaintiff claimed he was badly humiliated by the defendant’s action in a community shul.
The incident dates back to November 2015 during seudas shlishis in the Darchei Noam Shul. The plaintiff is the shul treasurer and is active in running the shul. An argument broke out during seudas shlishis during which shul finances were discussed. The argument took place in front of many mispallalim and at one point, the defendant came over to the plaintiff and began shouting insults at him, which attorney Hollander says were libelous. Among the shout...
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March 22, 2017 at 9:29 am
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch enters the third day of his confirmation hearing — and his final day of testimony — largely unscathed by Democratic attacks, as Republicans confidently predict he will win Senate approval despite liberal opposition.
A growing number of Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are calling for Gorsuch’s confirmation to be delayed because of the FBI investigation of ties between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.
But Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa dismissed that demand as “ridiculous,” and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told The Associated Press: “Gorsuch will be confirmed. I just can’t tell y...
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March 22, 2017 at 9:28 am
A group of anti-corruption reporters who in 2014 exposed a criminal scheme to move large sums of money out of Russia say they’ve uncovered details about how the system worked, including the transfer of $21 billion through major banks.
Members of the group say in a report published late Monday that they now know where the funds ended up and that banks allegedly refused to shut it down, despite warnings.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said that reporters from the group and the Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Moscow obtained bank records showing that funds were transferred worldwide via 112 bank accounts in Eastern Europe. They shared the details of the scheme, dubbed Laundromat, with investigative reporters in 32 countries.
“Law enforcement agencies in Moldova...
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March 22, 2017 at 9:26 am
Yad L’Achim turned to Education Minister Naftali Bennet earlier this week demanding that he put an immediate halt to all contacts between his ministry and “A New Way,” the NGO that brought Jewish children from Caesarea to a mosque to bow down and pray in keeping with Islamic custom.
A New Way, which receives funding from the New Israel Fund, organized the class trip as part of its effort to promote “coexistence between Jews and Arabs.” The tour of the nearby Arab town of Jisr a-Zarka included a visit to the local mosque together with Muslim children of similar ages. Upon entering the mosque, the Jewish children participated in prayers and bowed down to the ground. According to Channel 20, which exposed the affair, several of the parents said their children ha...
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March 21, 2017 at 10:37 pm
Following the Knesset Panel discussion regarding the working relationship between Magen David Adom and United Hatzalah, it was decided that both organizations will sit in deliberations facilitated by the Health Ministry in order to arrive at a binding and lasting agreement regarding the sharing of information of emergency calls.
In the event that the two sides are not able to reach an agreement with the arbitration of the Health Ministry, a private bill will be submitted to the Knesset that will be legally enforced by the appropriate ministries.
Committee Member MK (Yahadut Hatorah) Uri Maklev said during the discussion today “It is imperative that there be harmonious cooperation between these two organizations.”
MK (Shas) Michael Malchieli said: “The two organizations...
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March 21, 2017 at 10:36 pm
You might have expected the Trump Organization to tap the brakes on expansion plans given all the criticism over potential conflicts of interest while its owner sits in the Oval Office.
It’s hitting the accelerator instead.
The company owned by President Donald Trump is launching a chain of new hotels with plans to open in cities large and small across the country. Called Scion, they will be the first Trump-run hotels not to bear the family’s gilded name. The hotels will feature modern, sleek interiors and communal areas, and offer rooms at $200 to $300 a night, about half what it costs at some hotels in Trump’s luxury chain.
The company has signed letters of intent with more than 20 developers to build the hotels, said Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger. The last three we...
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March 21, 2017 at 10:33 pm
In a joint operation involving border police and Israel Police, soldiers during the night raided a forgery operation in the PA (Palestinian Authority) village of Yata, located in the Hebron district.
The facility provided documents for cash, including Israeli identity cards and permits to cross the Green Line and remain inside “Israel proper”. The raid is the result of a undercover operation that was taking place during recent months. PA residents paid thousands of shekels for forged permits.
The force confiscated a computer, printer, other materials and NIS 85,000. The commander stated the raid marks the closure of the major forgery operation that provided PA residents with documents for those willing and able to pay. He added that the forgery lab even produced passports.
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March 21, 2017 at 7:07 pm
An organization affiliated with Google is offering tools that news organizations and election-related sites can use to protect themselves from hacking.
Jigsaw, a research arm of Google parent company Alphabet Inc., says that free and fair elections depend on access to information. . To ensure such access, Jigsaw says, sites for news, human rights and election monitoring need to be protected from cyberattacks.
Jigsaw’s suite of tools, called Protect Your Election, is mostly a repackaging of existing tools:
— Project Shield will help websites guard against denial-of-service attacks, in which hackers flood sites with so much traffic that legitimate visitors can’t get through. Users of Project Shield will be tapping technology and servers that Google already uses to protec...
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March 21, 2017 at 7:06 pm
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch criticized Tuesday President Donald Trump's attacks on the federal judge who blocked his administration's travel ban, saying for the first time publicly that he found them "disheartening" and "demoralizing."
Gorsuch previously made those comments in private conversations with senators, but Tuesday marked the first time he went on the record with his disapproval of the president's rhetoric when he called US District Judge James L. Robart a "so-called judge."
"When anyone criticizes the honesty, integrity, the motives of a federal judge, I find that disheartening, I find that demoralizing, because I know the truth," he said during his Senate confirmation hearing, in response to a question about the tweets from Sen. Richard Blume...
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March 21, 2017 at 6:55 pm
An agreement was signed on Monday, resulting in a new salary package for career IDF personnel. The deal with signed between IDF representatives and the treasury. The new salary arrangement is an effort to keep qualified personnel from leaving to the private sector.
Officers and career NCOs (non-commissioned officers) including those in the cyber unit in the lower tier will earn NIS 6,000. For example, master sergeant today might earn a maximum of NIS 5,900 will be hiked to NIS 7,500. The new salary arrangement goes into effect in May 2017 and will be retroactive to March.
The IDF stresses conditions will improve for all 10,000 career personnel, part of a multi-year plan to improve conditions and streamline and replenish military resources.
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March 21, 2017 at 6:18 pm
The Party Financing Bill which has been dubbed the V15 Bill was passed into law in Knesset on Monday. It received its name after the V15 organization that worked to prevent the election of PM Netanyahu in the last elections. The bill intends to block foreign intervention in the Israeli political system by influencing elections with major contributions.
The new law compels organizations involved in political activities to report funding, no longer limiting the need to report financing to political parties exclusively. This prevents NGOs from receiving funding and then working to influence the outcome of elections.
The bill was sponsored amid a realization that many left-wing NGOs in Israel received monies from the EU and other interested parties trying to unseat the right-wing prime minis...
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March 21, 2017 at 6:16 pm
Israeli officials are accusing US National Security Council Middle East staffer Yael Lempert — a holdover from the Obama administration — of “straining the atmosphere” of diplomatic envoy Jason Greenblatt’s visit to Israel last week, the Hebrew news site nrg reported.
According to the report, Lempert tried unsuccessfully to prevent Greenblatt from meeting with Israeli settler leaders. Her effort, the report said, was thwarted by “counter-pressure” applied by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
Greenblatt, the report noted, had come to the region “to listen, but Lempert’s influence was on display, and not in a positive way.”
“Among other things,” the report went on to say, &l...
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March 21, 2017 at 6:09 pm
New York - Apple is cutting prices on two iPad models and introducing red iPhones, but the company held back on updating its higher-end iPad Pro tablets.
A much-speculated 10.5-inch iPad Pro didn’t materialize, nor did new versions of existing sizes in the Pro lineup, which is aimed at businesses and creative professionals. The new devices are mostly refreshes of existing models. Apple unveiled them through press releases Tuesday rather than a staged event, as it typically does for bigger product releases.
The iPad updates come as the tablet market continues to decline, after a few years of rapid growth. According to IDC, tablet shipments fell 20 percent to 53 million worldwide in the final three months of 2016, compared with the same period in 2015.
THE NEW LINEUP
The iPad Air 2...
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March 21, 2017 at 6:07 pm
Today the New York State Senate unanimously passed a measure (S.3241) sponsored by Senator Simcha Felder that would prohibit the requiring of a permit to sing the National Anthem or recite the pledge of Allegiance anywhere in New York.
“How in the world have some New Yorkers become so politically perverse that simple acts of patriotism must be protected?” said Senator Felder. “It’s a sad statement that we need a law to protect people who want to sing our country’s National Anthem or recite our Pledge of Allegiance.”
“You should not need a permit to show your national pride or your patriotism,” said Senator Marty Golden. “The National Anthem is revered because it conveys our strength, unity and courage. Our National Anthem should be su...
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March 21, 2017 at 6:00 pm
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel was arrested in Israel for tax evasion.
Omar Barghouti, a Qatari-born Palestinian who lives in northern Israel with his Israeli-Arab wife, was arrested Monday and questioned before being released a few hours later on bail, the Israeli business daily Globes reported. He was banned from leaving the country and required to leave his passport with the court in Haifa, according to reports.
He received permanent residency status in Israel in 1994.
Barghouti, of Acre, is accused of failing to report about $700,000 in income over the past decade that he earned while working as the director of National Computing Resources in Ramallah, according to Globes. He allegedly deposited the money in...
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March 21, 2017 at 5:57 pm
Kamatech accelerator, a Bnei Brak-based company that is bringing the ‘Start-up Nation’ revolution to the Charedi community in Israel, will be showcasing their start-up concepts to potential investors in New York on Thursday.
The Kamatech accelerator is part of an initiative which was created two years ago by Zika Abzuk, a senior development manager at Cisco Israel, along with Moshe Friedman, a Charedi entrepreneur. During the past few years, KamaTech has placed hundreds of Charedi men and women in Israel’s hi- tech companies across Israel.
“Even before our Demo Day, some of our start-ups are attracting attention from Fortune 500 companies, which we are excited about and will undoubtedly generate headlines later this week,” revealed Kamatech, CEO & Co-Fou...
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March 21, 2017 at 5:54 pm
Minister Gilad Erdan is interested in compiling a database of Israelis who support the BDS (Boycott, Divest & Sanctions) movement against Israel, Haaretz reports. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit remains adamantly opposed, explaining the minister lacks legal authority to compile such a database.
Erdan, who is Minister of Public Security, also serves as Minister of Strategic Affairs and his office is responsible for coordinating a plan against BDS efforts. Haaretz quotes “three senior officials” who are familiar with the matter stating he is working to compile a database on citizens supporting and assisting BDS and he has conferred to with Justice Ministry officials towards this end.
Erdan plans to obtain information from pubic sources, primarily Facebook and Twitter, i...
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March 21, 2017 at 5:44 pm
Actions taken by the Shin Bet with the assistance of the Israel Police, led to the February 2017 arrest and interrogation of Muhammad Murtaja, born in 1977 and a resident of Gaza.
Murtaja is the coordinator of the Gaza branch of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) organization, a humanitarian assistance program run by the Government of Turkey. He was arrested on suspicion of working for the military wing of Hamas.
During its investigation, the Shin Bet ascertained that Muhammad Murtaja was recruited by Hamas at the end of 2008. Beginning in 2009, Murtaja was active in the military wing of Hamas. His activity included, inter alia, military training and exercises, manufacturing weapons and explosive devices and digging terror tunnels. Murtaja even stored weapons, such a...
