The Times of Israel liveblogged Tuesday’s events as they happened.
Most schools remain closed after the summer holidays unless coronavirus infections are drastically reduced, a former government adviser said, and also warns that the opposite fight to the virus will “continue to fail” if it is not removed from the hands of the Ministry of Health.
“If we don’t lower the numbers to dozens, we shouldn’t open schools because the threat would be too high,” says Eli Waxman, former chairman of the National Security Council’s Pandemic Control Consultants Committee.
He adds: “If the prevalence remains as high as it is today — over 1,000 new infected daily — opening schools fully may have the effect of a renewed growth that will get us to 2,000, which will endanger the health care system.
“Under such conditions, we propose that you open the diminishment classes, up to the 3rd and the appropriate classes.”
He says that Israel is currently on a bleak trajectory, and it is already “unavoidable” that there will be 500 patients in intensive care.
Waxman has no faith in the Health Ministry to lead the virus fight. “Leaving the management as it is to the Health Ministry will just ensure that we will continue to fail,” says Waxman, a top physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
He expresses concern that if the Health Ministry remains the country’s lead player on coronavirus, even if case numbers are driven down, it will fail to take an essential step for preventing a resurgence.
Before leaving his advisory post in May, Waxman argued to authorities that success hinged on establishing an emergency control center that brings together various state players under the leadership of former military brass, and dilutes the role of the Health Ministry. He believes that this has now become urgent.
“The structure of the Health Ministry is not suited for this,” he says. “And the people that manage the Health Ministry don’t have the capabilities and they don’t have any relevant experience for managing this crisis.”
– Nathan Jeffay
Tehran, Iran – Iran has executed a man convicted of espionage on behalf of the United States through the promotion of CIA data on the Islamic Republic’s missile program, the justice spokesman said.
Reza Asgari, an Iranian citizen, executed last week, Gholamhossein Esmaili told the official online website of the judiciary, Mizan Online.
He worked in the Department of Defense’s aerospace department for years, retired about 4 years ago, the spokesman added.
Asgari had earned giant sums from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency “After his retirement by promoting the data he had on our missiles.”
“He identified, tried and was sentenced to death,” Esmaili said.
He added that the death sentence of Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, some other Iranian convicted of espionage last month, must also be handed down.
Majd accused of spying on Iran’s armed forces and helping the United States locate Qassem Soleimani, the largest Iranian general who later died in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.
Iran retaliated by firing a volley of ballistic missiles at US troops stationed in Iraq, but US President Donald Trump opted against responding militarily.
While the attack on the western Iraqi base of Ain Al-Asad left no US soldiers dead, dozens suffered brain trauma.
– AFP
MOSCOW – Three Russians and several Turks were wounded in Syria’s volatile Idlib province when a joint army patrol hit an improvised explosive device, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
The plane exploded at 8:50 a.m. local time while its convoy was patrolling the M4 highway on the southern component of a de-escalated area, according to a statement.
A Russian and a Turkish armored vehicle were damaged, with three Russians “lightly injured,” it says. Several Turkish soldiers were also wounded.
Russia and Turkey launched the patrols along the M4 in March following a ceasefire agreement aimed at stopping heavy fighting in and around Idlib, the last major bastion of anti-government forces in Syria’s civil war.
Russia backs Syrian President Bashar Assad in the conflict and Turkey backs the opposition, but the two countries have agreed several deals to reduce hostilities.
— AFP
Defense Minister Benny Gantz tells the IDF Home Front Command to ready to operate hotels for coronavirus patients and those unable to quarantine at home through 2021, saying it appears unlikely the COVID-19 pandemic will be over by then.
“The working premise needs to be active until the end of 2021,” Gantz says in a Zoom video call with commanders in charge of the hotels. “The entire work year next year will also revolve around the crisis. Unfortunately it’s hard for me to see this ending before then.”
Maj. Gen. Uri Gordon, the head of Home Front Command, says the greatest challenge facing his unit is getting people to come to the hotels.
“At the end of the day, uproot someone from your home for a long period of time, about a month, and that raises a lot of fear and objections from people with health and quarantine problems,” he says. “However, a great effort is being made and the device is already well oiled.”
He adds that more than 400 people check into hotels every day.
Tehran, Iran – Iran’s judiciary says a court upheld the death sentences of 3 other people related to fatal protests last November caused by high fuel prices.
The convictions were “confirmed by the Supreme Court after the defendants and their lawyers appealed,” said spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili, cited through the judiciary’s Mizan Online website.
Esmaili does not call the defendant, but says two of them were arrested for “armed robbery.”
Evidence found on their phones that they set fire to banks, buses and public buildings in November, he said.
Protests erupted on November 15 after the government more than doubled fuel overnight, exacerbating economic hardship in the country affected by sanctions.
They shook a handful of cities before spreading to at least one hundred urban centers in the Islamic Republic.
Gas caught fire, police stations attacked and department stores looted, before security forces intervened amid near-total internet outages.
“They filmed everything ambitiously and sent (the images) to some foreign news agencies,” Esmaili said in a video broadcast on state television.
“They themselves had provided the evidence.”
Iran has blamed last year’s violence on “thugs” backed by its foes the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
It has pointed the finger at exiled royalists and the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK), an exiled former rebel group which it considers a “terrorist cult.”
— AFP
Blue and White Minister Michael Biton is entering quarantine after exposure to a confirmed COVID-19 carrier.
Biton, a minister in the Defense Ministry, will remain in quarantine until next Thursday, according to Hebrew media reports.
A lawmaker from the opposition Yesh Atid party says the government “doesn’t have the legitimacy” to impose a renewed lockdown and that if it does order one, Israelis don’t need to obey.
“This government has violated the highest fundamental contract with the public, which forces us in times of crisis,” MS Idan Roll wrote on Twitter.
He charges government decisions to combat the virus “aren’t based on data” and are driven by political considerations.
“As a result [the government] does not have the legitimacy to order a total lockout and the public does not want to obey,” Roll says.
Knesset President Yariv Levin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s best friend, told his affiliates that Trump’s management is not interested in Israel moving forward with the annexation of West Bank land at this time, according to army radio.
The reports says Netanyahu will not move forward without US backing and quotes Levin’s “circle” saying the premier and his allies have stressed from the get-go that the move must be supported by the White House. These sources add that Israel is now waiting for an answer.
A senior army official warns that the Israel Defense Forces would likely have to impose base-blocking measures if the increasing number of infections in their ranks affects the operational capabilities of the IDF.
“Physical fitness first,” said the unidentified to the Twelfth Channel.
The warning occurs when IDF has noticed a marked increase during the following week in the number of service members inflamed with COVID-19.
The official, described over the network as “very high-ranking,” also said that the IDF is preparing the virus data hotline for troops amid lawsuits on formula overload.
“Right now, we’re processing 1,500 programs a day,” the official says.
The Conference of Presidents of major Jewish Organizations of the United States condemns the commentary of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that his resolve to turn Hagia Sofia of Istanbul into a mosque is a precursor to the “liberation” of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
“We are horrified by the incendiary and offensive through Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoganArray … which implies that it seeks to take control of the holy sites of Jerusalem’s Old City, which houses the al-Aqsa Mosque,” the convention leaders said in a matrix.
They add: “In addition, this outrageous rhetoric regarding the al-Aqsa mosque may incite and incite violence against Israel and its citizens, and has incited it, and will aggravate tensions in the region. We strongly condemn him and urge President Erdogan to renounce his incendiary words and actions. »
Jerusalem was under the authority of the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of the Republic of Turkey, until 1917, when it was captured by the British during World War II. Erdogan, an Islamist, insulted Israel by the Al-Aqsa mosque.
President of The Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem criticized Israeli company Nasus Pharma for claiming that its TaffiX nasal spray can block up to 97% of viruses by adding the new coronavirus.
“It’s unfortunate that it being marketed in this way — deluding the public,” Prof. Jonathan Halevy, a member of a Health Ministry public information team, tells Channel 12 news.
He says that the efficacy of TaffiX can be evaluated once it has been properly tested.
While promoting Taffix, Nasus Pharma says the nasal spray is intended to complement the mask and is not an option to comply with the Ministry of Health’s social estrangement regulations.
Twenty-eight graduates from the central city high school of Coronavirus Gan Yavne after attending a personal night of dancing.
Another 140 academics who attended the dance went into quarantine, according to public broadcaster Kan.
Despite the prohibition of official graduation parties as a component of meeting restrictions, academics in many schools had illicit components, adding those from Ra’anana, who were at the center of a recent epidemic.
– July 14 @kann_news, 2020
Israel’s last spy satellite began returning its first photographs last night, a week after it entered orbit, according to the Ministry of Defense.
“A week after their successful launch into space, the Array engineering groups.. activated the Cameras of the Ofek-16 reconnaissance satellite for the first time last night and uploaded the first incredible quality satellite photographs to an Israeli aerospace industry center in Yehud,” the ministry said. said in a statement.
The ministry publishes copies of these first photographs to the public.
The satellite was introduced as a component of a joint operation of the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Aerospace Industries’s Space Decompose. According to the Ministry of Defence, since the liberation groups of the two organizations carried out satellite checks to make sure it is working properly.
“In this context, they have gradually and controlledly activated all the systems and subsystems that make up the satellite. Once the procedure was completed, the satellite camera was effectively activated. In the coming weeks, engineering groups will continue the extensive testing procedure and will get the satellite prepared for operational use, according to a predefined protocol,” the ministry said.
The Ofek-16 satellite entered orbit in the hours leading up to last Monday’s dawn.
“This is a landmark achievement – the result of a complex technological and operational process that reflects IAI’s capabilities in the field of space, and also highlights our partnership with other defense industries,” says Boaz Levy, the head of IAI’s Systems, Missiles and Space Group.
– Judah Ari Gross
Right-wing lawmakers criticize Ms. Yesh Atid Idan Roll for saying that if the government re-endorsed a national blockade to involve the growing number of coronavirus infections, citizens would want to obey.
In an earlier tweet, Roll criticized the government’s handling of the pandemic and said he did not have the “legitimacy” to impose the blockade.
Coalition whip Miki Zohar, a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party, accused Roll of calling a “rebellion.”
“The cat came here out of the bag. The other people of “Yesh Atid” and Yair Lapid will do everything, adding a call to make Israel anarchy, to undermine the maintenance of the right government, the Likud and Prime Minister Netanyahu, ” tweeted Zohar.
Deputy Naftali Bennett, leader of the Yamina National Religious Party, over Lapid to renounce Roll’s comments.
“This is a call for anarchy and this how a state and its institutions are dismantled,” Bennett writes on Twitter. “I have very harsh criticism of the government’s failures… but this is an elected government.”
Iranian force chief Quds warns that the United States and Israel have “difficult days” ahead.
“You are still experiencing your halcyon days. You have very tough days and occurrences ahead of you,” Gen. Esmail Ghaani says during a meeting, according to Press TV.
Ghaani, who took over as Quds Force chief after his predecessor Qassem Soleimani was killed earlier this year in a US drone strike, also comments on a major fire that broke out on the USS Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship.
“This incident is an answer to your crimes, which has come about at the hands of your own elements,” Ghaani claims. “God uses your own hands to punish you.”
The owner of a Jerusalem bakery says he and his workers have received seven fines for NIS 500 a pop for not properly wearings masks in the bakery, where temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius due to the ovens.
Speaking with Channel 12 news, Tal Calderon of Calderon Bakery says he also received a police order to close the bakery for 48 hours due to the violations and that he was taken to a police station for questioning.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is huddling with medical experts, ministers and Health Ministry officials to discuss further limiting gatherings from 20 to 10 people, the Ynet news site reports.
According to Hebrew media, participants in the video conference include Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, who was Director General of the Ministry of Health until mid-June.
Bar Siman-Tov played a leading role in Israel’s initial response to the pandemic and oversaw many of the strict restrictions put in place to contain the virus.
BERLIN — A German state’s police chief steps down over a scandal involving a left-wing lawmaker who received threatening emails after someone accessed her personal details on a police computer.
The interior minister of Hesse state, a central region that includes Frankfurt, says police chief Udo Muench asked to be sent into early retirement. Muench was taking responsibility for failings “that he does not have to answer for alone,” minister Peter Beuth says, news agency dpa reports.
A prominent politician with the opposition Left Party, Janine Wissler, recently received threatening emails signed “NSU 2.0.” That was an apparent reference to the National Socialist Underground, a far-right group that killed 10 people, mostly with immigrant roots, between 2000 and 2007.
It emerged that someone had requested her personal details on a Hesse police computer before the emails were sent, but it isn’t yet clear who that was. The state government has appointed a special investigator to look into the case.
In 2018, several threatening messages signed “NSU 2.0” were also sent to a Frankfurt lawyer representing victims’ families in the trial of the original NSU’s only surviving member. Beuth has said he can’t rule out the possibility of a right-wing extremist network in the regional police.
— AP
NEW YORK — A $19 million settlement between Harvey Weinstein and some of his accusers is rejected by a judge.
US District Judge Alvin K. Heellerstein in Manhattan says Weinstein’s accusers in the proposed class-action settlement were too varied to be grouped together.
Lawyers for several women who had opposed the deal praise what they describe as Hellerstein’s swift rejection of a one-sided proposal.
A spokesman for Weinstein doesn’t immediately comment. A lawyer for his companies declines comment.
A spokesperson for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who announced the tentative agreement on June 30, says her office is reviewing the decision and determining its next steps. “Our office has been fighting tirelessly to provide these brave women with the justice they are owed and will continue to do so,” Morgan Rubin says in a written statement.
The deal to settle lawsuits brought by James and a Chicago lawyer on behalf of multiple women would have provided between $7,500 and $750,000 to some women who accused Weinstein of sexually abusing them.
The 68-year-old former Hollywood producer was convicted earlier this year of rape and sexual assault against two women. Accusations by dozens of women in 2017 led to the downfall of his career and gave rise to #MeToo, the global movement to hold powerful men accountable for their sexual misconduct.
Weinstein was diagnosed in March with the coronavirus just days after he was moved to the state’s maximum security Wende Correctional Facility near Buffalo to begin serving his 23-year prison sentence.
— AP
IDF chief Aviv Kohavi says preparations for possible Israeli annexation of portions of the West Bank is the military’s top priority, warning that an outbreak of violence there could potentially spread out beyond its borders.
“We are in a period that may challenge the region’s stability. Preparation is at the top of our list of priorities. Rising tensions in the central region can lead to rising tensions on other fronts. Therefore we are preparing for the possibility of a campaign that will extend beyond the borders of Judea and Samaria,” he says, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
Kohavi makes his remarks at a ceremony marking Maj. Gen. Nadav Padan’s exit from the IDF Central Command and Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai’s entrance into the position of commander of the unit.
— Judah Ari Gross
An hours-long meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu, ministers and health officials on the continued rise in new coronavirus infections has ended.
No decision was made on further restrictions, Hebrew media reports say.
According to reports, the National Security Council called during the meeting for the closure of synagogues and yeshivas, while arguing that restaurants should only be allowed to offer delivery.
It also reportedly called for beaches to be closed and gatherings to be limited to 10 people.
The Ynet news site says some of those who took part in the meeting urged a full or partial lockdown to be reimposed, but Defense Minister Benny Gantz noted it has still not been two weeks since tighter restrictions came into place and more time was needed to weigh their effect.
Netanyahu said a lockdown may be reimposed but not now, the website reports.
A coalition of Jewish American groups has called on the US government to press Jordan to extradite a Palestinian woman who helped carry out a 2001 suicide bombing that killed 15 people, including two Americans, in Jerusalem.
A joint statement signed by 18 groups aims to step up the pressure on Jordan, a key American ally, to send Ahlam al-Tamimi to the US for trial.
The statement urges the US to “bring all pressure to bear,” including possible cuts in American financial aid, to press Jordan into honoring an extradition agreement.
Yesterday’s statement was signed by a mix of right-wing and centrist groups. Among them several major mainstream Jewish groups, including the Jewish Federations of North America, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and B’nai B’rith, as well as the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.
Al-Tamimi is wanted by the US on a charge of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against American nationals.
Jordan has rebuffed previous efforts to extradite her, citing double jeopardy considerations, but the Trump administration said recently it would consider withholding assistance as leverage. Jordanian officials have not commented publicly about the matter.
Al-Tamimi was arrested in the West Bank by Israel weeks after the bombing and sentenced to 16 life terms in prison, but released in a 2011 Israel-Hamas prisoner swap and moved to Jordan. She has made frequent media appearances, expressing no remorse for the attack and saying she was pleased with the high death toll.
Among the victims of the attack was Malka Roth, a 15-year-old Israeli American girl whose father, Arnold Roth, has led a campaign seeking al-Tamimi’s extradition.
“It’s time that Jordan’s disregard for its legal, diplomatic and moral obligations to hand Tamimi over to US justice was brought to an end,” Roth says.
— AP
Hundreds of Israelis demonstrate outside Prime Minister Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem, calling for him to resign due to his indictment on corruption charges.
A few dozen supporters of Netanyahu hold a counter-protest nearby.
Police close parts of two nearby roads due to the protest.
A financial aid package unveiled last week by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Israel Katz for Israelis hurt by government-mandated restrictions against the coronavirus passes its first reading in the Kneset.
The bills will now go to the Knesset Finance Committee before coming up for the second and third readings it must clear to become law.
The government will decide over the weekend whether to reintroduce a lockdown in order to curb the rising number of coronavirus cases, Channel 13 reports.
According to the network, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said during a meeting today convened by Prime Minister Netanyahu that he opposes local lockdowns but is open to nationwide one.
Despite Likud’s official backing for Yamina MK Ayelet Shaked as the opposition representative on the Judicial Appointments Committee, Channel 12 news reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s party is working to thwart her appointment.
According to the network, Netanyahu’s associates have told the premier’s coalition partners that selecting Shaked for the panel could have severe consequences, including the calling of new elections.
Shaked, a former justice minister who has been an outspoken critic of the Supreme Court, is seen as a bête noire of Netanyahu’s.
NEW YORK — Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend pleads not guilty to charges she recruited girls and women for the financier to sexually abuse more than two decades ago.
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell appears in a video court hearing in Manhattan.
Maxwell, 58, has been held without bail since her July 2 arrest at her million-dollar New Hampshire estate, where prosecutors say she refused to open the door for FBI agents, who busted through to find that she had retreated to an interior room.
She was charged with recruiting at least three girls, one as young as 14, for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 1997.
An indictment alleges that she helped groom the victims to endure sexual abuse and was sometimes there when Epstein abused them. It also alleges that she lied during a 2016 deposition in a civil case stemming from Epstein’s abuse of girls and women.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019, several weeks after he was confronted by two accusers at a bail hearing who insisted that he should remain in jail while awaiting sex trafficking charges that alleged he abused girls at his Manhattan and Florida mansions in the early 2000s.
In court papers, Maxwell’s lawyers argue that Epstein’s death left the media “wrongly trying to substitute her for Epstein — even though she’d had no contact with Epstein for more than a decade, had never been charged with a crime or been found liable in any civil litigation, and has always denied any allegations of claimed misconduct.”
— AP
Scuffles break out between anti-Netanyahu protesters and police officers during a demonstration against the premier outside his official residence in Jerusalem.
Video shows some of the demonstrators trying to break through barricades set up on Azza Street outside the Prime Minister’s Residence, while others hold lit torches.
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) July 14, 2020
The Environmental Protection Ministry announces it will give NIS 10.6 million ($3 million) to authorities bordering the Mediterranean and Red seas that are willing to change their bylaws to prohibit the use of single use plastic on beaches and to clean up stretches of coastline where bathing is not officially allowed.
Sums for each local authority will be determined by the length of unofficial coastline.
Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel says that more than 71 percent of beaches checked by the ministry during the second half of last month within the framework of the Clean Beach Index were declared to be clean, or very clean. The cleanest were in Ashdod, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Bat Yam, Acre and the area of Hof Hasharon to the north of Tel Aviv.
— Sue Surkes