Israel News

order to receive treatment for heart problems.

“When we had our interview in the American embassy and they asked us about why we wanted to go to America, we replied that we lived through the Doctors’ Plot. After that, they had no further questions,” said Vera. “All of our lives, we had to overcome obstacles.” Protecting the Sea

In a first, the Ivory Coast has designated a protected marine area in an attempt to protect dozens of endangered species of sea life.

The protected marine area will be located in Grand-Bereby and will cover more than 2,590 square kilometers. Located on Africa’s western coast, Grand Bereby serves as an important nesting site for turtles, including several species on the verge of extinction.

The Ministry of Environment said in a statement that the protected marine area will “undoubtedly boost local tourism, creating jobs for the

The move is part of the Ivory Coast’s effort to conserve its abundance of tropical wildlife. The sunny African nation is home to over 20 species of rare animals, including hammerhead sharks and leather-

back turtles. benefit of the community.”

In September, the Ivory Coast announced that it would designate five marine protected areas and is working with environmentalists to draft new regulations to conserve animal habitats. The sites marked as protected zones are said to be the Cavally River and Azagny National Park.

“Levels of marine protection in West Africa are generally low, so the Ivorian government’s creation of a marine protected area is a big statement that will hopefully act as a regional exemplar,” said Kristian Metcalfe, a marine biologist and researcher at University of Exeter.

Esther Horgan, Hy”d, Killed in Terror Attack

Esther Horgan, a Jewish mother of six, was brutally murdered in a terrorist attack on Sunday evening.

Horgan, 52, had gone jogging on Sunday in a forest near her home in Tal Menashe in Samaria. She had been declared missing after failing to return from her evening run, causing police to dispatch the search party that found her body.

“Police and crime scene investigators were called to the scene and have begun collecting evidence,” police said in a statement.

Horgan was laid to rest later on Monday. A well-known artist and marriage counselor, Horgan was described as a pillar of her community and a devoted mother.

Binyamin Horgan, Esther’s husband, said that they met 31 years ago and were married within a few months.

“Esther first came to Israel on a trip with her parents at the age of ten,” Binyamin said. “She fell in love with the Land and said that she had to come and live here – and she did, moving here immediately after graduating from high school.”

He added, “So many people have asked me to speak about her, but how can I do justice to her in just a few words? She was simply an amazing person, full of joy in life, someone who loved everyone and everything. She was beautiful both inside and out.”

Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan shared, “She was a beloved woman with a good heart who so loved to help people. She engaged in sports activities only a minute from her home yet was murdered in such an unjust and cruel way.” Da-

gan asked, “What kind of barbaric people, like in the Middle Ages, have the cruelty to smash the head of a 52-year-old woman with a rock?”

The IDF and Shin Bet subsequently launched a massive manhunt, raiding nearby Palestinian villages and the nearby city of Jenin. A court imposed a gag order, preventing the press from reporting any details of the ongoing investigation.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz promised that security forces would succeed in rounding up Horgan’s killer.

“I share in the deep sorrow of the Horgan family following the heinous murder of Esther,” Gantz said. “Security forces are already working to get their hands on the heinous killer. We will never accept a reality in which human lives are cheapened.”

A Fourth Election

The Knesset narrowly rejected a deal postponing the deadline for passing the 2020 budget, sending Israel to its fourth election in two years.

The Knesset would have automatically dissolved itself had a budget not been passed by midnight on Tuesday. To avert new elections, the Likud and Kahol Lavan parties agreed on a bill that would have pushed back the deadlines for the 2020 and 2021 budgets to allow both sides more time for negotiations.

The legislation would have delayed the deadline for passing the 2020 budget from December 23 to December 31, and the 2021 budget to January 5. Yet the compromise bill was voted down by a margin of 49-47 after lawmakers in both parties refused to vote in favor.

Kahol Lavan MKs Miki Haimovitch, Asaf Zamir, and Ram Shefa voted against the bill, openly defying party leader Benny Gantz, while others remained outside the Knesset plenum during the final vote.

Sharren Haskel and Michal Shir, two Likud lawmakers who served as an internal opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also voted against the bill and resigned from the Knesset. They announced in a joint statement that they would join the New Hope party headed by Gidon Sa’ar, a Likud veteran who split off earlier this month to found his anti-Netanyahu faction.

“I am at peace with my decision to do the least I can to end this embarrassing show of a stuck and conflicted government which is holding an entire country hostage for political seats, and therefore I will resign from the Knesset and join ‘New Hope’ led by Gideon Sa’ar,” tweeted Shir.

With the coalition failing to delay the budget deadline, the Knesset dissolved itself on Tuesday evening, setting up new elections that will take place on March 23. Both parties accused each other of being responsible for sending the country to new elections at a time when Israel is suffering from an unprecedented economic crisis.

In his final Knesset speech before the bill was defeated, Netanyahu accused Kahol Lavan of putting their narrow electoral considerations over the wellbeing of Israel’s citizens.

“I worked all day to stop flights, to prevent the new coronavirus mutation from reaching Israel. It is very possible that it is already here. I think at this time we should have joined forces and found every way to prevent these unnecessary elections,” said Netanyahu.

The inability to delay the looming budget deadline was the final straw for the national-unity government. Established six months ago after three unprecedented election cycles ended without a clear winner, the Likud-Kahol Lavan coalition aimed at putting their differences aside to tackle the coronavirus. But the coalition of opposites soon splintered, with the large and bloated government of 34 ministers unable to function due to partisan squabbling and infighting.

First IsraelMorocco Flight

trip by a joint Israeli-American delegation that included the signing of several bilateral and trilateral agreements, including those on aviation, tourism, health, water, and agriculture.

National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat led the trip on the Israeli side.

Ben-Shabbat, the son of Morocco-born parents, said peace is “breaking out before our eyes.” He made his remarks on the tarmac, in front of the plane, which was painted with a hamsa symbol, a hand image popular as a good luck symbol in both countries.

Jared Kushner, senior adviser to Trump, said he hoped the renewed ties between Israel and Morocco would create a relationship as warm as the one developing between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi, following a normalization agreement signed earlier this year.

Since then, tens of thousands of Israelis have visited the United Arab Emirates and multiple cooperation deals have been signed by the two nations.

“My hope is that this flight today to Morocco will produce the same momentum,” Kushner said.

Kushner, who largely led Trump’s Middle East efforts, said the U.S. president tried to create a “rational” policy based on common goals, apparently referring to business deals and shared concerns over the threat from Iran.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said that while each normalization agreement between Israel and an Arab country – three of which have been signed in the past four months, with a fourth country, Sudan, having indicated plans to soon do the same – was significant on its own, together they represented a major shift in the region.

“Each peace agreement stands on its own. Each is to be celebrated. Together they represent a sea change in the Middle East,” Ambassador Friedman said.

The delegation was scheduled to spend less than a day in Morocco, holding high-level meetings with Moroccan officials, including King Muhammad VI, before returning to Israel.

Israel and Morocco established low-level diplomatic ties in 1994, although their liaison offices closed after the outbreak of the Second Intifada.

Morocco became the third Arab state this year to normalize ties with Israel under U.S.-brokered deals, and in return, the U.S. president fulfilled a decades-old goal of Morocco by backing its contested sovereignty in Western Sahara.

Speaking at a Jerusalem ceremony alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Kushner said normalization with Morocco “will bring about a whole new set of opportunities for northern Africa and the entire Middle East.”

“Our collective efforts have led to the birth of a new Middle East, where firsts and breakthroughs are now happening almost every day,” Kushner said.

Morocco is home to North Africa’s largest Jewish community, which has been there since ancient times and grew with the arrival of Jews expelled from Spain by Catholic kings from 1492.

It reached about 250,000 in the late 1940s, 10 percent of the national population, but many Jews left after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. About 3,000 Jews remain in Morocco. Around 700,000 Jews of Moroccan origin live in Israel.

Although ties between the two countries were suspended in the year 2000 due to the Intifada, trade between Israel and Morocco was not. Between 2014 and 2017 the volume of trade exchanges stood at $149 million, according to statistics published by Moroccan newspapers.

First Israeli and Emirati Sports Game

H.C. Bat Yam, Israel’s reigning champion ice hockey team, defeated the Dubai Camels 9-6 in what was the first-ever match between professional sports teams from the two countries.

The high scoring match was held at Dubai’s ice rink, an NHL-standard rink situated in the center of the Dubai Mall. Prior to the game, players posed for pictures and stood while “Hatikvah” played over the loudspeakers.

Noting the game’s historical nature, National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman recorded a personal video greeting congratulating the players on being part of history.

“A match, the first professional match between a team from Israel and a team from the Emirates,” said Bettman. “We’re proud of the fact that hockey can bring people together and we wish all of the participants good luck.”

Additional greetings were sent by the commissioner of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), Europe’s premier ice hockey league.

While not a popular sport in the soccer-mad Middle East, hockey has seen steady growth in both Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Israel’s national men’s ice hockey team is currently ranked 34th worldwide, ahead of Spain and South Korea, and took home the gold medal for the first time in 2019’s IIHF World Championship Division II Group B tournament.

Israel’s ice hockey league currently has 3 senior divisions (A, B, C) with a total of 29 senior teams. Contributing to hockey’s growing popularity in Israel is the influx of Russian emigres, who brought their love for the sport with them to the Holy Land.

Founded in 2009, the Emirates Hockey League (EHL) is part of the International Ice Hockey Federation and currently has six teams. The league is currently in negotiations to bring a KHL franchise to Dubai in 2021-22.

Bibi Gets Vaccinated

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was injected with Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine on national

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The event took place on Saturday evening at Jerusalem’s Shaare Tzedek Medical Center evening and was designed to boost public confidence in the new vaccine. Wearing a black turtleneck, Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstien were both injected by Dr. Tzvi Berkowitz, the premier’s personal physician.

After being jabbed with the new vaccine, Netanyahu turned to the camera and implored Israelis to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

“It’s a small shot for a person and a huge step toward the health of us all,” the prime minister joked, paraphrasing Neil Armstrong’s famous utterance upon becoming the first person to walk on the moon.

“We are leaving the darkness of the coronavirus, at the start of the journey to a great light,” added Netanyahu, “If everyone cooperates, keeps the rules and goes to get vaccinated, we’ll get out of this and we could well be the first country in the world to emerge from this [pandemic].

“Let’s do it together.”

Netanyahu and Edelstein were placed under supervision for a halfhour before being allowed to return home. The two had decided to be the first Israelis to receive the vaccine in order to encourage the public to receive the vaccine despite widespread concerns over possible side effects.

The unprecedented quick development of Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines have led to an upsurge of conspiracy theories and concerns over the safety of the drug. In a poll published by Ynet last Friday, only 24% of Israelis said that they would get the vaccine immediately, while 63% of Israelis said they planned on being immunized within the next few years.

The Health Ministry had launched an effort to mitigate such fears by paying celebrities to share photos of themselves getting their shots on social media and by arranging for question-and-answer sessions with medical experts on national television. On Sunday, former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and President Reuven Rivlin were inoculated in a live feed broadcast on Facebook.

Medical personnel and people aged 60 years and over will be the first to receive the vaccination. It is estimated that, by the end of this December, about 4 million doses of the vaccine will be available in Israel. It is not yet known what vaccines will be available to the entire population.

IDF Soldier Flees from Terrorist

Israelis reacted with outrage after a viral video showed an IDF soldier fleeing from a firebomb-wielding terrorist on Saturday evening.

The video filmed a standoff between a Palestinian terrorist and a soldier from the elite Golani Reconnaissance Battalion guarding a hitchhiking post near the Samarian settlement of Kedumim. The terrorist can be seen parking his car and slowly approaching the guard booth while holding a firebomb.

Despite being armed, the Israeli soldier refrains from shooting the terrorist, who continues approaching undisturbed. Finally, he lights the bomb and hurls it at the soldier, who flees instead of responding. The Palestinian then speeds off unharmed.

“A Molotov cocktail was thrown at an IDF soldier near a military post in the area of the Kedumim settlement. IDF troops have launched a search for the suspect. In the event, there were no injuries or damage caused,” confirmed the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit.

According to reports, the terrorist was pursued in a car chase by an off-duty policeman who witnessed the exchange. He managed to get away after a nearby IDF patrol refused to provide backup and cut off possible escape routes, citing orders from superiors.

While the terrorist was subsequently arrested on Sunday evening, the video of the exchange has since racked up hundreds of thousands of views. The footage sparked outrage throughout Israel, with right-wing politicians, journalists, and pundits decrying what they said was the IDF’s overly-strict rules of engagement that left troops unable to protect themselves.

“This story is just insane,” tweeted Religious Zionist lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich. “But it’s not the soldier’s fault. The judicial system in the State of Israel that behaves like in Sodom is to blame.” Jewish Home head Rabbi Rafi Peretz lambasted the IDF, calling on the high brass to ensure that similar incidents ended with a “neutralized terrorist.”