“The biased International Criminal Court in The Hague reached a decision that is pure antisemitism,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday following the ICC’s announcement that it would launch a full war crimes probe of Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.
President Reuven Rivlin called the move “scandalous” and added that Israel is “proud of its soldiers, our sons and daughters… who keep watch over their land. We will all be on guard to ensure they will not be harmed due to this decision.”
Defense Minister Benny Gantz condemned the ICC for “rewarding terrorism,” adding: “It [the decision] undermines the protection of regional stability and human life.”
Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit, commented that “as was said before, the A-G’s position is that the ICC has no authority on this matter.”
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed Washington’s opposition on Thursday morning: “The United States firmly opposes and is deeply disappointed by this decision. Israel is not a party to the ICC and has not consented to the Court’s jurisdiction, and we have serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel. We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.”
Blinken also stressed that the Palestinians don’t qualify as a sovereign state and therefore cannot participate in the ICC.
Israeli authorities said on Wednesday that a Libyan-owned tanker suspected of smuggling oil from Iran to Syria was responsible for spilling tons of crude into the eastern Mediterranean last month, causing one of the Jewish state’s worst environmental disasters.
Over 90 percent of the country’s 195 kilometer (120-mile) Mediterranean coastline was covered in more than 1,000 tons of black tar.
Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel said the Panamanian-flagged “pirate ship owned by a Libyan company” — identified as the Emerald — filled its stores with oil in the Persian Gulf, then sailed with its transmitters off toward the coast of Syria. Ministry officials believe that the ship dumped its oil in the eastern Mediterranean, around 70 kilometers (40 miles) off the coast of Israel, on Feb. 1 or 2.
Gamliel called the incident a deliberate act of “environmental terror” and blamed Iran. “We will sue for compensation for all citizens of Israel,” she said.
Israel on Sunday will start inoculating some 120,000 Palestinians who legally work in Israel and Jewish communities in the West Bank against COVID-19, the IDF announced on Wednesday. Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians, COGAT, said the Jewish state will set up vaccination stations at checkpoints and industrial zones in the West Bank.
Initially, Israeli healthcare workers will administer the shots at 12 designated vaccination complexes. Jerusalem is considering opening more at a later stage. Palestinian workers will be eligible to make an appointment to receive the vaccine upon presenting a valid work permit.
COGAT expects to immunize all Palestinian workers in a campaign that is supposed to last several weeks. The first dose will be administered within two weeks, with the vaccination centers being reopened to give the second shot.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian Authority admitted that it used scarce coronavirus vaccines to immunize senior officials, Jordanian royals, and members of the Palestinian national soccer team. Some 10 percent of the 12,000 doses that the West Bank received from Israel and Russia were diverted to VIPs, angering many Palestinians.
Planning on getting a degree in theology, mathematics, or biological sciences? Six Israeli universities are among the world’s best for studying those subjects, the prestigious QS World University Rankings by Subject survey revealed on Wednesday.
The annual study ranked almost 14,000 academic programs by subject at 1,440 universities in 85 locations worldwide. “Israel continues to be competitive on a global scale, and more innovative than most rival countries,” QS’s senior vice president of professional services, Ben Sowter, said.
“It is no secret that Israel is one of the world’s foremost hubs of technological innovation, with only South Korea and Japan producing more patented innovations per million inhabitants,” Sowter added.
For biological sciences, the Weizmann Institute in Rechovot ranked highest in the country, at No. 75.
In the field of mathematics, all seven Israeli universities cracked the top 500, led by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology at No. 66. Israel’s highest-ranking program is the Hebrew University’s theology, divinity and religious studies track, which came in at No. 13.
The Begin Symposium: Media, Policy & Perception: The Public Perception of Israel
How does the media’s portrayal of events and policy impact public perception of Israel? On March 10, a panel consisting of public figures in government, media, and global affairs will dive into this critical space. News coverage should come as close to the truth as possible, regardless of the media outlet. What can be done to hold the news media to this standard?
Join HonestReporting CEO Daniel Pomerantz and the rest of the panel for this exciting, topical conversation.
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