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Mossad Director Yossi Cohen met on Tuesday with United Arab Emirates National Security Adviser Tahnoun bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi, as Israel and the UAE continue to move to normalize ties. Cohen was a key player in the historic agreement, and became the first senior Israeli official to travel to Abu Dhabi since the deal was announced last week.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would oppose the sale of advanced American F-35 warplanes to the United Arab Emirates. Netanyahu issued his statement after an Israeli newspaper reported that part of the US-brokered accord included an agreement to supply the Gulf state with advanced weapons systems.
And another historic peace deal may be announced soon. Sudanese foreign ministry spokesperson Haidar Badawi Sadiq confirmed that his country is in talks with Israel and admitted that the imminent agreement between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi has paved the way for other Arab countries to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.
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Israeli fighter jets and aircraft struck Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip early on Tuesday. “The attack was carried out in response to the launching of incendiary and explosive balloons from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory during the day,” the IDF said. Thousands of dunams have recently been set ablaze inside Israel, with 850 dunams (210 acres) being burnt in the first half of last week alone.
The escalation of violence on its southern border has compelled Israel to close the main commercial crossing into the coastal territory and cut off fuel supplies into Gaza.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel is treating the explosive balloons as if they are rocket attacks. “We have, for 10 days consecutively, been striking Hamas and [other] terror groups’ infrastructure. We are also applying various sanctions in areas that are important to Hamas. Unfortunately, we are also preparing, as needed, for the possibility of a round, or [multiple] rounds, [of fighting]. I hope we won’t get to this,” Netanyahu said.
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Israel reacted to a UN-backed tribunal’s conviction of a Hezbollah member for involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, saying Hezbollah had “taken hostage” the future of the Lebanese people and that “the countries of the world must take action against this terrorist group in order to assist Lebanon in liberating itself from this menace.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry added: “Hezbollah’s military build-up, its efforts to set up a precision-guided missile arsenal, and its actions endanger the entire region.”
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon acquitted three members of the Iran-backed terror group and said there was no evidence Hezbollah leaders or Syria were involved in the 2005 suicide truck bombing that killed Hariri and 21 others. The verdict on the most consequential political assassination in Lebanon’s recent history failed to answer even the most basic question: Who ordered the killing?
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Antisemitism Watch: Linda Sarsour was featured on Tuesday at the Democratic National Convention’s Muslim Delegates Assembly, despite her history of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, support for female genital mutilation and other forms of bigotry. In her address, Sarsour said: “The Democratic Party is not perfect, but it is absolutely our party in this moment.”
“Heil Hitler” and “Juden” were sprayed on a Jewish house in the city center of Lyon, France. The League against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA), a French NGO, announced that they will take the matter to court: “Neo-Nazis are enemies of the Republic and its values,” and “they must be fought as such with all means of law.” This incident happened amid a wave of racist and antisemitic incidents in both Lyon and other parts of France.
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An Israeli hospital’s innovation center has announced a 95% success rate in clinical trials for a new saliva-based coronavirus test that provides nearly instant results. The technology, developed by Newsight Imaging, has succeeded in duplicating the function of a large, expensive device in a single, cost-effective chip. The company uses an algorithm to separate the profile of a human infected with a specific virus from that of a human infected with a different virus or from that of a healthy human.
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A quarter century after Israeli spies, a Canadian activist and a Syrian rabbi smuggled nine rare medieval Jewish manuscripts out of Damascus, an Israeli court decided the books will remain under the National Library’s custodianship for their preservation.
The decision ends a protracted legal battle over the ownership of the Damascus Crowns, illuminated Bibles written on parchment that belonged to the Syrian capital’s Jewish community for centuries until they were secreted to Israel in the 1990s.
The Jerusalem District Court ruled that the books were “treasures of the Jewish people” that had “historic, religious and national importance” and must be preserved. According to the verdict, the best way to do so would be to keep them at the National Library under a public trust.
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German and Israeli Air Force jets flew over the former Nazi concentration camp Dachau on Tuesday in tribute to the Jews and others killed there in the Holocaust.
This is the historic moment the Israeli Air Force and @Team_Luftwaffe flew by the Dachau Concentration Camp together: pic.twitter.com/3W7MKzUEvJ
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 18, 2020
(Video courtesy: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
Two Israeli F-16s and two German Eurofighters escorted an Israeli Air Force Gulfstream G-550 carrying the commanders of both air forces over the camp memorial outside Munich, while a third Eurofighter filmed the formation from the sky.
They also flew over the nearby Fuerstenfeldbruck airfield to pay tribute to the 11 Israeli athletes killed during the Munich massacre attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics.
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