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COVID-19: At least 34 people were arrested when clashes broke out after midnight on Tuesday as thousands of people gathered in Jerusalem to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s policies. After largely peaceful protests during which the demonstrators marched to the nearby Knesset and back, police began forcibly clearing people from Paris Square outside Netanyahu’s home at about 1 a.m.
While Prime Minister Netanyahu has signed off on numerous economic aid packages, red tape has many Israelis saying that the assistance is too little, too late.
On the bright side, Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer is piloting a coronavirus-testing technology that is believed to be able to detect viruses in a fluid sample in less than a second.
Another step towards containing a second outbreak of COVID-19: Former senior health official Prof. Gabi Barbash has agreed to lead Israel’s response to the pandemic, according to multiple Israeli media reports.
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Israeli security forces arrested 10 members of two Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror cells that had planned to carry out attacks in the West Bank. The cells were being funded and trained by Iran and Hezbollah, the Shin Bet security service said on Tuesday.
According to the Shin Bet, the cells planned to carry out terror attacks against Israeli targets in the West Bank and within Israel, “including an attack in the [northern Israeli] town of Harish and kidnapping a soldier to use as leverage to get prisoners released from Israeli prison.”
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The Dutch government has frozen funding of a Palestinian NGO with links to a terrorist group that murdered an Israeli teenager last year. The move came in response to a campaign by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) that called attention to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), which had received Dutch funds totaling some $23 million. The UKLFI had petitioned the Dutch government last year after it was revealed that two UAWC employees were involved in the 2019 bombing at a West Bank spring that killed 17-year-old Israeli Rina Shnerb and wounded her father and brother.
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Antisemitism Watch: The Star of David has been deemed “hateful imagery” by Twitter, which is locking the accounts of users who display it in their profile pictures. According to messages they received from Twitter: “We have determined that this account violated the Twitter Rules. Specifically for: Violating our rules against posting hateful imagery. You may not use hateful images or symbols in your profile image or profile header. As a result, we have locked your account.”
A German man goes on trial on Tuesday for a Yom Kippur attack on a synagogue that is considered one of the worst antisemitic assaults in the country’s post-war history. The trial comes at a time when antisemitic crimes have reached their highest level since Germany started tracking such crimes in 2001, amid an overall increase in extremist criminality.
Recommended Reading
- On the road to elections? (Herb Keinon)
- BDS: Fighting for social justice, or plotting to destroy Israel? (Daniel Pomerantz)
- Iran regime is beyond its sell-by date (Struan Stevenson)
- Woke racism: ‘Jewish Privilege’ (Paul Miller)
- Behind the numbers: What’s US aid to Israel all about? (Paul Shindman)
