Lightning Sets Golan Heights Ablaze

Golan Heights fire broke out after a lightning strike, but nature reserve personnel were quick to explain how the area will rehabilitate itself with most of the forest green again in few months.

By Ahiya Raved

 

 

A wildfire in the Golan Heights caused by lightning, which raged for 12 hours until it was extinguished Saturday afternoon, has destroyed 750 acres of forested land, and killed numerous wild animals.

Fire at Gamla (Photo: Shmulik Cohen, Nature and Parks Authority)

Fire at Gamla – Photo: Shmulik Cohen, Nature and Parks Authority

The fire broke out on Friday at around 10pm, following the lightning strike.

“I arrived at the area around midnight and realized that if we didn’t stop the fire immediately it would spread rapidly and become uncontrollable,” said Eldad Eitan, head of Gamla Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights. Continue Reading »

New Guinness World Record: 6 Israelis swim from Cyprus to Israel

Last year’s attempt was cut short after a fierce sea storm, but a group of 6 Israelis just swam for 6 days breaking the Guinness World Record for longest group relay swim in open sea.

 

An Israeli team broke the Guinness World Record for the longest open sea group relay swim on Saturday, reaching the Israeli coast after swimming 380 km from Cyprus.

Six Israeli swimmers at the Marina in Herzliya after swimming Cyprus.

Six Israeli swimmers at the Marina in Herzliya after swimming Cyprus. – Photo: AFP

The six-man team, Udi Arel, Ori Sela, Doron Amosi, Ben Anosh, Luke Shetbon and Oded Rahav, set off from the beach at Paphos on Sunday, swam in four-to-five kilometers turns for six days. Continue Reading »

UK Labor MPs Rebel Against Dictated ‘Palestine’ Vote

Opposition MPs are ‘furious’ for being directed to vote for recognition of Palestinian state, admitting it makes ‘peace’ process more difficult.

By Ari Yashar

 

The UK is anticipated to pass a non-binding vote on Monday recognizing “Palestine,” but members of the Labor party which proposed the move are reportedly holding an internal revolt against the forced vote.

Ed Miliband

Ed Miliband – Reuters

MP Ed Miliband is head of the Opposition and the Labor party, whose member Grahame Morris proposed the vote. His shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander has told Labor shadow ministers that they must vote in favor of the motion, reports the British Independent. Continue Reading »

Israel’s designation of Christian Arabs to Aramean causing tension between Muslims, Christians

Israel’s Muslim Arabs claim Jerusalem’s recent recognition of Aramean as a nationality, is part of Israel’s ‘divide & conquer’ policy toward Arabs.

By Lily Galili

 

September 16th 2014 was a big day for the Christian community in Israel: The Ministry of the Interior recognized “Aramean” as a nationality. Since then, about 20,000 Israeli Christians of Aramean descent going back to the time of the Bible and early Christianity, are entitled to be registered as having “Aramean” rather than “Arab” nationality. A new nation was born, or rather resurrected.

Nazareth Billboard warning Christian minority – Photo: Julie Eltes

The decision, having obvious political implications, has triggered a chain reaction. Continue Reading »

Syrian intelligence base on Golan Heights to spy on Israel captured by rebels

 

 

A 4-minute video clip was uploaded to the Internet by Free Syrian Army fighters, who are seen in a building in Quneitra just near the int’l border between Israel & Syria.

By YASSER OKBI/ MAARIV HASHAVUA

 

Syrian rebel forces fighting the government of President Bashar Assad overran a military intelligence base on the Golan Heights that served as a joint Russian-Syrian forward post for information-gathering on Israel.

Syrian rebels take control of military intelligence base on Golan Heights. – Photo: YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT

In a four-minute video clip which was posted on the Internet by the rebels, Free Syrian Army fighters are seen in a building in Quneitra, just near the boundary between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Continue Reading »

Tel Aviv Cocktail Bar voted Best Bar in Africa & Middle East

Israel’s Imperial Craft Cocktail Bar in Tel Aviv was voted the Best Bar in Africa & The Middle East at the World’s 50 Best Bar Awards.

 

Ever wondered where in the Mideast you should go for the perfect Manhattan or the dirtiest Dirty Martini? It turns out that the region’s best bar is hidden away in a small, unassuming hotel in Tel Aviv.

Imperial Craft Cocktail Bar.

Imperial Craft Cocktail Bar. – Photo: Courtesy

On Thursday, the Imperial Craft Cocktail Bar in the Imperial Hotel on the city’s Hayarkon Street, was voted the Best Bar in Africa and The Middle East at the World’s 50 Best Bar Awards. Continue Reading »

Israel’s 2nd international airport to be built in Galilee

 

The new airport, to be located at Ramat David, was chosen because it had an infrastructure already in place to support a large new airport.

By Ilan Gattegno

 

The government recently approved plans to construct a new international airport in northern Israel, ending a 15-year-long search for a complementary airport to Ben-Gurion International Airport, which is already nearing operational capacity.

The Ramat David air base may become Israel’s second international airport in 2019 [archive] – Photo: Ancho Josh / JINI

The new airport will be located in Ramat David in the Galilee and will be the second largest airport in the country.

Continue Reading »

After UNRWA Facilities Assisted Hamas in War, Now Seeking $1.6b in Aid to ‘Rebuild Gaza’

 

Chutzpah? UN Palestinian body makes largest single plea in UNRWA’s 64-year history asking $1.6 billion to rebuild Hamas’ institutions & constituency.

By AFP

 

The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency is to make its largest ever financial plea to donors, it said on Thursday, asking for $1.6 billion (1.26 billion euros) to rehabilitate war-battered Gaza.

(Reuters)

(Reuters)

The conflict between Israel and Hamas-led Gaza militants, which ended on August 26, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.

“This is the largest single ask in UNRWA’s 64-year history,” spokesman Christopher Gunness told AFP ahead of an October 12 donors’ conference in Cairo. Continue Reading »

Palestinian brewery cancels its 2014 Oktoberfest

Taybeh Brewery, the only Palestinian microbrewery, has cancelled its 2014 October festival in the wake of Gazans still suffering after war with Hamas.

 

The Taybeh Brewery, located in the West Bank town of the same name, has cancelled its annual Oktoberfest this year following the summer war in Gaza, according to USA Today.

Oktoberfest

A scene from the 2013 Taybeh Oktoberfest. – Photo: Screenshot

“The blood in Gaza still did not dry, so we felt we needed better times to celebrate,” said master brewer Nadim Khoury, who runs the family-owned business.

This is the first time the brewery has not hosted the October festival in the town in a decade. Continue Reading »

New Political Con Satisfies US & EU but Gaza Facing ‘Donor Fatigue’

Unparallelled deceptions & corruption by Palestinians escapes US & EU leadership, but int’l aid conference has shown global community become a little wiser to Hamas’s numbers game.

By Tova Dvorin

 

A conference that aims to raise billions of dollars to “rebuild Gaza” after Hamas’s latest terror war on Israel faces “donor fatigue,” an insider told AFP on Friday.

The United Nations’ Palestinian Arab “refugee” agency, the UNRWA, has described the financial needs as “unprecedented” ahead of the Cairo meeting, which follows Hamas’s third war on Israeli civilians in six years.

But it is unclear how generous the world is willing to be given the intractability of the conflict and other priorities in the region, such as the fight against jihadists in Syria and Iraq. Continue Reading »

Report: Iran orders Hezbollah to Hurt Israel for Sabotage at its Parchin Nuclear Plant

Kuwaiti paper reports Hezbollah’s attack on IDF soldiers was in retribution for sabotage that caused explosion at Iran’s nuclear site.

By Gil Ronen

 

Kuwaiti newspaper A-Rai reported Thursday that the explosion that took place earlier this week at the Iranian nuclear site in Parchin was not the result of a malfunction, but an intentional act of sabotage.

A section of the Parchin military facility in Iran

A section of the Parchin military facility in Iran – Reuters

The report relies on European diplomatic sources in Washington, DC, who said that a foreign country carried out the attack in order to foil experiments in the mounting of nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles. Continue Reading »

1,200 academics charge BDS ‘violates the very principle of academic freedom’

1,200 academics challenge boycott of Israel by signing petition that charges BDS being unfairly prejudice and for stifling academic freedoms.

By i24news

After upward of 350 anthropologists from around the world have endorsed a boycott of Israel and its academic institutions, some 1,200 academics signed a pro-Israeli petition calling to oppose such measures.

Boycott Israel, BDS ( Twitter )

Boycott Israel, BDS – Twitter

“We, the undersigned academics, (faculty, full time and part time, academic staff including librarians, researchers, post doctorates, technicians and technologists, administrators, and trustees) vigorously support free speech and free debate but we oppose faculty or student boycotts of Israel’s academic institutions, scholars and students,” reads the petition, posted on the website of the Faculty for Academic Freedom. Continue Reading »

Trilateral water swapping arrangements signed by Jordan, Palestinians & Israel

 

The signed understanding includes a 200-kilometer pipeline to carry residual salt brine from the planed desalination plant in Aqaba, to a diminishing Dead Sea.

By SHARON UDASIN

 

A major trilateral water understanding signed by Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian parties in December is moving forward slowly but surely – as tender preparations for an Aqaba desalination facility begin to materialize, high level Israeli sources told The Jerusalem Post last week.

Tap water

Tap water [illustrative]. – Photo: INIMAGE


The project in question involves a memorandum of understanding signed on December 9, in which senior officials from the three governments met at the World Bank headquarters in Washington to advance cross-border water swaps and an eventual funneling of Red Sea brines to a shrinking Dead Sea. Continue Reading »

Three Palestinians arrested for animal cruelty, torturing endangered hyena

 

Palestinians arrested for violently abusing a striped hyena, an endangered species, after ostentatiously posting a self-incriminating video to the internet.

Erez Erlichman

 

Three Palestinians have been arrested for allegedly abusing a striped hyena, the police said, after an IDF patrol caught two of them with wounded animal and connected a third to the incident through a video posted online.

The hyena (Photo: Israel Nature and Parks Authority)

The hyena – Photo: Israel Nature and Parks Authority

The Palestinians, from Beit Umar, were caught with the animal on Friday, the eve of Yom Kippur, near the settlement of Kfar Etzion, a few hours after the Nature and Parks Authority saw it in a video posted online. Continue Reading »

Meet Holland’s Red Light District 71 yr-old Jewish Twin Prostitutes

Martine & Louise Fokkens, now retired after 50 years working in the trade, are local celebrities in Amsterdam’s Red Light District.

By Cnaan Liphshiz

 

JTA – Like many Jewish grandmothers, Martine and Louise Fokkens enjoy talking about their grandchildren in language laced with Yiddish.

Martine, left, and Louise Fokkens in Amsterdam in 2010.

Martine, left, and Louise Fokkens in Amsterdam in 2010. – Photo: Aspekt Publishers

At 71, the twins from Amsterdam also paint, think often about the Holocaust and attend synagogue on Jewish holidays.

But the Fokkens are not like most Jewish grandmothers.

For one thing, they recently retired after 50 years of working as prostitutes in Amsterdam’s Red Light District.

Continue Reading »