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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will address Knesset members via Zoom next week. The address is slated to be held on Sunday at 6 pm local time. Efforts are underway to ensure that as many MKs as possible will attend the special session, even though parliament is in recess. The speech will be live-streamed online to allow the public to tune in.
Ukraine had reportedly asked to hold a large rally at Yad Vashem that would be addressed by Zelensky to discuss Russia’s invasion of his country. However, the Holocaust museum reportedly turned down the request due to concerns that comparisons would be drawn between Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and the Holocaust, as well as concerns over the memorial being used for a political cause.
In response to Zelensky’s planned address to parliament, Russia’s ambassador to Israel has asked for an “urgent meeting” with Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy, local media reported Tuesday evening. Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov is reportedly set to meet with Levy on Wednesday. A senior Israeli official told local media that the goal of the meeting will likely be to protest Zelensky’s speech to Israeli lawmakers.
This would not be the first time Zelensky has addressed a country’s lawmakers via Zoom. Earlier this month, he held a call with US lawmakers, and he will deliver a virtual address to Congress on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, some Israeli officials now believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin may also request to address Israel’s parliament.
Earlier Tuesday, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba for the first time since the Russian offensive began. In a “long and positive” conversation, Lapid updated Kuleba on Israel’s continued efforts to mediate and provide assistance in the ongoing war in Ukraine.
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Iran has more than 3,000 ballistic missiles, many of which can reach the State of Israel, head of the United States Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said on Tuesday. McKenzie was in Israel last week and held talks with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi.
“At a military level my concern is first of all that they do not have a nuclear weapon but I am also very concerned about the remarkable growth and efficiency of their ballistic missile program,” McKenzie told the Senate Armed Services Committee, adding: “They have over 3,000 missiles of various types, some of which can reach Tel Aviv…None of them can reach Europe yet.”
McKenzie called Iran’s missile force the greatest threat to the region’s security, and said that Tehran has developed an arsenal of nuclear-warhead capable ballistic missiles and has tested these weapon platforms multiple times. He told the committee that over the last 5-7 years, Iran has invested heavily in its ballistic missile program. He also expressed concern about the regime’s drone program. The Islamic Republic’s drone fleet has evolved from “commercial off-the-shelf” UAVs to drones that resemble cruise missiles in terms of increased speed, range, accuracy, resistants to electronic warfare, and warhead weight, McKenzie assessed.
McKenzie’s statements came as Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow had received guarantees from the US regarding its ability to trade with Tehran as part of ongoing talks to salvage the Iran nuclear deal. Lavrov told reporters that guarantees it had received from Washington would protect Russian involvement in Iran’s sole Bushehr nuclear energy plant.
More than 10 months of talks in Vienna have brought major powers close to renewing the landmark 2015 deal on regulating Iran’s nuclear program.
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US officials have reportedly briefed journalists with contradictory intelligence regarding Sunday’s Iranian attack on a building in northern Iraq. According to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), designated a terror group by Washington, the ballistic missile strike targeted “a strategic center for conspiracy and mischiefs of the Zionists” in Kurdish-controlled Erbil. At least two people were wounded. On the day following the strike, New York Times journalist Farnaz Fassihi cited a “senior US official briefed on the Erbil attack” as confirming that the structure served as an “Israeli training facility.”
However, on Tuesday, a senior Biden Administration official informed the NYT that the building was, in fact, a “civilian residence only and did not also serve as an Israeli training site.”
NY Times citing Fars and a secondhand rumor about the target of the Iranian attack in Erbil being Israeli, as if either is reliable…and then backtracks. Notice the disparity in engagement with the tweets. Plus, a Kurdish officials' response. pic.twitter.com/G7l71Jpx5J
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) March 15, 2022
The latter comment echoed the response by Hiwa Afandi, deputy head of the Kurdistan Regional Government, who on Tuesday tweeted that the building “is known to everyone in the city, it is the expensive private residence of KAR Group’s CEO Shekh Bazz.” Responding to the US’ previous claim of an Israeli presence, Afandi said: “Someone is lying here and I am not sure it’s not intentional.”
The direct assault against an alleged Israeli target in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region reflects an emboldened Tehran amid talks in Vienna to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Russia’s representative to the ongoing negotiations, Mikhail Ulyanov, told Iranian state media on March 5 that Iran is liable to get “much more than it could expect” in the Vienna talks.
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According to a study released on Tuesday, in 2021 at least 200 organizations moved to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. This number included at least 60 colleges and universities, 39 non-federal governments, as well as 96 NGOs and other groups.
In addition, the governments of Australia, Estonia, Guatemala, Poland, South Korea and Switzerland adopted the IHRA’s definition last year, with the Philippines’ February 2022 decision bringing the total number of endorsements to 37 countries.
The IHRA definition states that “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews,” and includes a list of illustrative examples ranging from Holocaust denial to the rejection of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
This definition has become a “barometer in the global fight against Jew-hatred, serving as a comprehensive and well-known tool to monitor, measure and ultimately combat contemporary manifestations of this age-old societal scourge,” said the report, which was commissioned by the US-based Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) and Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry.
The report noted that in total, 865 organizations have endorsed the working definition so far, including 19 US states, 204 local governing bodies in the UK, and 314 educational institutions.
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As Israel and Jewish communities around the world mark the festival of Purim starting on Wednesday night, the National Library in Jerusalem is giving a rare glimpse into its collection of Esther scrolls — the largest in the world.
Purim commemorates the miraculous deliverance of Jews in the Persian Empire during the fifth century. The Book of Esther describes how Persia’s viceroy, Haman, plotted a genocide against the Jews. Through a series of events, they survived, and Haman ended up hanging on the gallows he had erected for his Jewish arch-enemy Mordechai.
Israel’s National Library, which features the world’s most extensive collection of textual Judaica, is home to hundreds of Esther scrolls (also known as “Megillot”) – including some of the world’s oldest. For example, the library was recently gifted a scroll written by a scribe on the Iberian Peninsula around 1465, prior to the Spanish and Portuguese Expulsions at the end of the fifteenth century.
Some of the Megillot are currently being digitized and will be showcased in the National Library of Israel’s landmark new building, currently under construction in Jerusalem.
Recommended Reading
- Shadow War No More (Yoav Limor, Israel Hayom)
- Why Anti-Zionists Lie and Exaggerate About Israel (Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post)
- Open Letter to My Fellow Progressive Jews: Amnesty Wants to Tokenize You (Amanda Berman, Jewish Journal)
- Fast Company Lauds 11 Firms With Israeli Ties in 2022 Most Innovative List (Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21C)
- Ukraine and Purim: A Call for Jewish Unity (David Stav, Algemeiner)
