Israeli authorities on Monday registered the country’s highest number of new coronavirus cases in a 24-hour period in nearly two months, with some 1,837 infections confirmed. It comes as ministers voted to impose a 3-week nationwide nighttime curfew that will extend through the Hanukkah holiday to January 2.
The Jewish state in late October began exiting its second COVID-19-induced month-long-plus lockdown. According to the influential National Security Council, should daily cases in Israel top 4,500 before the turn of the calendar year then a third near-total shutdown will be imposed.
Concurrently, there appears to be light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel, as Jerusalem is in the next few days expected to receive a first shipment – comprising some 110,000 doses – of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Overall, the Israeli government has procured 8 million doses of the vaccine, sufficient to inoculate 4 million people, or roughly 45 percent of the total population.
Israeli officials are reportedly lobbying members of the US Congress to fast track legislation that would grant Sudan immunity from future terrorism-related lawsuits, given that Khartoum has apparently made this a prerequisite for normalizing ties with Jerusalem. According to American media, the chairman of Sudan’s interim Sovereignty Council, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, enlisted the Jewish state’s help during a visit two weeks ago by an Israeli delegation to the North African nation.
It is widely believed that Sudan’s leadership conditioned forging diplomatic relations with Israel on Washington’s willingness to remove the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism; in addition to shielding Khartoum from litigation stemming from its harboring of Al Qaeda members, who in the 1990s orchestrated attacks on US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
In the wake of the assassination of chief Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an avalanche of social media posts has circulated showing pictures of the Israeli flag raised on a bridge in Tehran alongside a sign reading, “Thank you Mossad.” The exceptionally rare occurrence comes in a country whose leadership is committed to the Jewish state’s destruction and where it is illegal to publicly display Israeli symbols.
The stream of online posts appears to have originated with Twitter user Vahid Online, who claimed to have received the images from the Iranian capital.
The open source social media account Intelli Times later verified the authenticity of the photos.
?????? ??????? ?? ???: ?????????? #????? #Iran
??? ???? ??????? ????? ??? “Thank you Mossad”??????? ?? ????????:https://t.co/aT5n2vkYNr pic.twitter.com/GDKzn3aYXs
— Vahid Online (@Vahid) December 7, 2020
A member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family has purchased a 50 percent stake in Israeli Premier League soccer team Beitar Jerusalem. According to the club, the deal with Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan also included a commitment to invest more than $90 million in Beitar over the next decade. In the announcement, Sheikh Hamad was quoted as saying: “I am thrilled to be a partner in such a glorious club that I have heard so much of and in such a great city, the capital of Israel and one of the holiest cities in the world.”
The statement is being construed as significant given the reference to Jerusalem, the eastern section of which is claimed by the Palestinians, as the capital of the Jewish state.
Nevertheless, the move has raised some eyebrows due to the behavior of a hardcore group of Beitar supporters known collectively as “La Familia,” which on multiple occasions has been accused of inciting hatred against Arabs and Muslims.
Just weeks after Israel and the United Arab Emirates in September formally agreed to normalize relations, both countries’ top soccer leagues signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance cooperation.
We are not alone.
This, according to retired Israeli general Haim Eshed, who in an interview claimed that contact with aliens was a regular occurrence but has been kept hidden because “humanity isn’t ready” for the knowledge. Eshed, who headed the Defense Ministry’s Space Directorate for nearly 30 years, suggested that the United States was part of a “Galactic Federation” and has long been cooperating with extraterrestrials, including at a secret underground base on Mars where he said American and alien representatives were stationed.
Eshed stressed that he waited to disclose the information because “if I had come up with what I’m saying today five years ago, I would have been hospitalized.… [But now, people are] talking differently, ” he continued, “[and] I have nothing to lose. I’ve received my degrees and awards; I am respected in universities abroad, where the trend is also changing.”
The retired general, who received three prestigious Israel Defense Prizes, concluded by saying that President Donald Trump was on the verge of disclosing the information until the Galactic Federation stopped him in order to prevent mass hysteria as humans still needed to “evolve and reach a stage where we will… understand what space and spaceships are.”
-
- Good Prince, Bad Prince: Why Israelis Shouldn’t Be Shocked by Saudi Royal’s Rant (Raphael Ahren, Times of Israel)
- Will the EU Develop a Serious Strategy to Combat Antisemitism? (Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Begin-Sadat Center For Strategic Studies)
- Nazi Atrocities From Decades Ago Occupy the Supreme Court’s Attention (Robert Barnes, Washington Post)
- Israeli Firms Raise Record Amount of Capital in 2020 Despite Pandemic Downturn (Luke Tress, Times of Israel)
