The Times of Israel liveblogged Thursday’s events as they happened.
The head of the United Nations launches an angry tirade against fossil fuel companies, accusing them of betraying future generations and undermining efforts to phase out a product he calls “incompatible with human survival.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also dismisses suggestions by some oil executives — including the man tapped to chair this year’s international climate talks in Dubai — that fossil fuel firms can keep up production if they find a way to capture planet-warming carbon emissions. He warns that this would just make them “more efficient planet-wreckers.”
It’s not the first time the UN chief has called out Big Oil over its role in causing global warming, but the blunt attack reflects growing frustration at the industry’s recent profit bonanza despite warnings from scientists that burning fossil fuels will push the world far beyond any safe climate threshold.
“Last year, the oil and gas industry reaped a record $4 trillion windfall in net income,” Guterres says after a meeting with civil society groups. “Yet for every dollar it spends on oil and gas drilling and exploration, only 4 cents went to clean energy and carbon capture — combined.”
“Trading the future for thirty pieces of silver is immoral,” he says.
A poll published tonight by Channel 12 indicates a slight improvement for the ruling Likud but shows the coalition still losing its majority.
According to the poll, if fresh elections were held today, Likud would see a one-seat increase from the previous poll conducted by the channel to 27 seats, the same as Benny Gantz’s National Unity party.
Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid gets 18 seats, and the far-right union of Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit 10 seats, as does the ultra-Orthodox Shas.
United Torah Judaism polls at seven seats and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu six.
The mostly Arab Hadash-Ta’al, the Islamist Ra’am and left-wing Meretz all have five seats.
Both the Arab Balad and Labor under Merav Michaeli fail to cross the election threshold, according to the poll.
The results give the current 64-seat coalition just 54 seats, while the former government gets 61, with Hadash Ta’al taking the remaining five.
The poll also asks who is most suited to being prime minister.
Gantz beats out Netanyahu by 37% to 36% in a head-to-head. Put against Lapid, Netanyahu scores 39% while Lapid gets 30%.
Israeli television polls are notoriously unreliable and respondents participated in this survey knowing that another election is not in the offing.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog indicates some Israeli flexibility with the Biden administration’s effort to broker an interim nuclear agreement with Iran.
“Diplomacy isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Herzog says when discussing the Biden administration’s efforts during an event hosted by the Democratic Majority For Israel, Haaretz reports.
“As far as we’re concerned, diplomacy in and of itself, and such understandings, are not necessarily bad to the extent that they can help deescalate a situation,” Herzog says.
“For us, for diplomacy to succeed to bring about a positive outcome, it has to be backed by very strong deterrence on Iran and a credible military threat. The Iranians will give nothing for free or voluntarily, and there ought to be very strong deterrence vis-à-vis Iran,” he adds, while reiterating Israel’s position that it is not bound by any nuclear agreement world powers will sign with Iran and will act against the Islamic republic if it deems that it must.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed officials about the details of a potential nuclear deal between the US and Iran that Israel would be able to accept, according to reports in Hebrew media.
Netanyahu downplayed the US-Iran negotiations as closing in on a “mini-agreement, not an agreement,” the reports by Walla and Channel 13 said, citing several unnamed lawmakers who took part in the closed-door, three-hour meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“What’s on the agenda at the moment between Washington and Tehran is not a nuclear deal, it’s a mini-deal,” Netanyahu was reported to say. “We will be able to handle it.”
The Foreign Ministry is investigating Israel’s deputy ambassador in Paris Ronit Ben Dor on suspicion she was active on social media in protesting the current government, Channel 12 reports.
The report says Ben Dor, a professional diplomat from the ministry, had been liking a series of posts denigrating the far-right government and its controversial judicial overhaul, in contravention of ministry policies that require workers to remain apolitical and represent the country.
The Foreign Ministry told Channel 12 that it views the accusations “very seriously.”
The report comes days after reports that staff at Israel’s embassy in Paris worked to prevent Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from meeting with members of the Jewish community when he was in the country last week.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to organize a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hebrew media reports.
The reports, citing a senior Israeli official, come amid a warming of ties between Israel and Turkey, but after years of animosity between the two leaders.
The reports did not say where the meeting would take place.
Channel 12 says the move comes with Netanyahu apparently being denied a White House invitation from US President Joe Biden. A long-hoped for invitation to the UAE has also failed to emerge.
Despite a recent improvement, ties between Netanyahu and Erdogan have long been tense.
Israel was a long-time regional ally of Turkey before Erdogan came to power but deteriorating ties imploded after a 2010 Israeli commando raid on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara ship, part of a blockade-busting flotilla, that left dead 10 Turkish activists dead who attacked IDF soldiers aboard the ship.
Despite an official apology by Netanyahu, Erdogan went on to accuse the Jewish state of “keeping Hitler’s spirit alive” during Operation Defensive Shield in Gaza in July 2014.
Despite a moderate subsequent improvement in relations, both countries withdrew their ambassadors after Erdogan leveled charges of “state terrorism” and “genocide” at Israel when dozens of Palestinians were killed in Gaza rioting on May 14, 2018, the day former US president Donald Trump controversially moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The International Monetary Fund praises Israel’s “remarkable economic performance” in 2022, but warned “uncertainty” over controversial judicial reforms may harm growth.
After GDP increased by 6.5 percent in 2022, growth would likely “slow down this year as it returns to potential over the medium term,” the IMF’s Executive Board says in a statement released as part of an annual appraisal of the country’s economy.
According to the IMF’s forecast, growth is expected to fall to 2.5% this year.
The slowdown is caused by several factors including high inflation — 5% in 2022 — and the right-wing government’s now-paused controversial legal reforms, which have brought tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities.
“Uncertainty created by the proposed judicial reform could have a negative impact on the economy,” the IMF said, calling for a “politically sustainable solution.”
A truck driver who hated Jewish people turned a sacred house of worship into a “hunting ground” when he burst into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 congregants, a federal prosecutor says today, asking jurors to return a conviction in the US’s deadliest antisemitic attack.
Robert Bowers is charged with 63 criminal counts, including hate crimes resulting in death and obstruction of the free exercise of religion resulting in death. Some of the charges carry a potential death sentence.
In closing arguments, a prosecutor tells the jury that Bowers targeted his victims because of their religion.
“He is filled with hatred for Jews,” prosecutor Mary Hahn says, noting Bowers had an extensive history of posting antisemitic and white supremacist content online. “That is what propelled him to act.”
Bowers’ attorney is expected to address the jury after the government finished its presentation, followed by jury deliberations.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen speaks with Turkey’s new top diplomat Hakan Fidan and congratulates him on taking office.
According to Israel, the two speak about the importance of bilateral ties for regional stability and about ways to expand ties.
“The resumption of flights from Israeli carriers will expand even further the tourism ties between the countries, and will strengthen the friendship between the nations,” says Cohen.
Fidan thanks Cohen for the assistance Israel provided after deadly earthquakes that rocked the country in February, according to the Foreign Ministry readout.
Consumer prices in Israel in May rise at more than half the rate than was forecast, the Central Bureau of Statistics says, easing pressure on the Bank of Israel to hike interest rates again in July.
The consumer price index (CPI), a measure of inflation that tracks the average cost of household goods, increases by 0.2% in May, below analysts’ expectations of between 0.5% and 0.6%.
The May print brings annual inflation over the past 12 months to 4.6%, after hovering around 5% for more than six months. That’s after the April CPI monthly figure of 0.8% surprised to the upside and was the highest reading since July 2022.
In May, increases were seen in the cost of fresh fruits, which jumped 11%, culture and entertainment was up 1.1%, and housing rose 0.5%. These were offset by price declines of fresh vegetables, which fell by 2.9%, while furniture and home equipment and clothing and footwear costs were down 0.8% each.
Rents on renewal of contracts rose 3.6% in May unchanged from April and rents on contracts for new tenants went up 8.6% versus 9% in April.
Over the past year, the Bank of Israel has steadily hiked its benchmark interest rate — to 4.75% in May this year from a record low of 0.1% — in a bid to rein in inflation. Despite the steps, inflation has been hovering above 5% in annual terms for more than six months, far above the government’s target range of 1% to 3%.
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz slams National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for publicizing that he would not extend the term of Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai at a time when Shabtai was overseas attending a family emergency.
“The leaks from Ben Gvir about his intention to end the term of the police commissioner — a man who actually has contributed dozens of years to the security of the state — at a time when he is overseas for a sensitive family issue, embarrasses the state of Israel,” Gantz says.
“Ben Gvir is not fit to oversee the internal security of Israel and is harming the ability of the police to deal with great challenges,” he adds, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire the far-right minister “long before the commissioner’s term ends.”
Two children from the central town of Rehovot are hospitalized after their grandmother accidentally fed them marijuana cookies, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
The two girls aged 2 and 4 were taken to the hospital after becoming ill at kindergarten. There, doctors discovered the drugs in their bloodwork.
After the police and parents were called in it was discovered that the children’s grandmother, who had been visiting, gave them the cookies as a treat before school, without knowing what they were.
The parents have been detained for questioning.
Robert Gottlieb, the legendary literary editor who shepherded into print and best-sellerdom such 20th-century classics as Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” and Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen,” dies at age 92.
Gottlieb died yesterday of natural causes at a New York hospital, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group announces. Caro, who had worked for decades with Gottlieb on his Lyndon Johnson biographies and was featured with him last year in the documentary “Turn Every Page,” says in a statement that he had never worked with an editor so attuned to the writing process.
“From the day 52 years ago that we first looked at my pages together, Bob understood what I was trying to do and made it possible for me to take the time, and do the work, I needed to do,” Caro says in a statement. “People talk to me about some of the triumphant moments Bob and I shared, but today I remember other moments, tough ones, and I remember how Bob was always, always, for half a century, there for me. He was a great friend, and today I mourn my friend with all my heart.”
Few editors of his generation had as big an impact on the literary culture, from his time as editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster to his later association with Alfred A. Knopf (now Knopf Doubleday). He edited The New Yorker for five years and wrote numerous books himself, including several on one of his many passions: ballet.
Israel is in talks to sell used Merkava tanks to two countries, including one in Europe, in what would be the first such export of the armored vehicle, a Defense Ministry official says.
Speaking to the Calcalist financial paper, Yair Kulas, the head of the ministry’s International Defense Cooperation Directorate — known as SIBAT — says his unit is advancing more sales of surplus equipment from the Israel Defense Forces.
“There is a potential of several hundred million shekels there. The world is chasing systems, and production processes require time, and not everyone has the time to wait,” Kulas says.
He notes that many European countries are seeking to quickly replenish supplies after donating billions of dollars’ worth of arms to Ukraine that have helped it push back Russia’s invasion.
“There are two potential countries with which we are holding advanced negotiations [on a sale of the Mervaka tanks],” he says. ” I am barred from naming them, but one is on the European continent.”
The Merkava has been the IDF’s main battle tank since the 1980s. In recent years, the Armored Corps replaced most of its Merkava Mark 3 models with the more modern Mark 4.
The potential sales would likely include the older Merkava Mark 2, and some of the Merkava Mark 3 tanks, introduced in the 1990s.
He says other surplus systems, including military boats and armored personnel carriers, will be sold as the IDF has procured more advanced systems. In 2021, Israel sold 29 old F-16 fighter jets to the US and Canada to be used for training.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has decided he will definitely not extend the term of Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai by an extra year, Channel 12 reports.
The report notes that Ben Gvir has not formally informed Shabtai yet. Shabtai is currently in Germany where his brother is undergoing a complex surgery.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Ben Gvir has been holding a series of meetings with top police commanders, sounding them out as he seeks a new commissioner.
Shabtai has repeatedly clashed with the far-right minister, who has sought to exert greater control over the police force.
Ben Gvir and Shabtai have also repeatedly tussled over the police response to massive nationwide protests against government plans to rein in the judiciary, with the minister pushing for cops to take more aggressive measures against demonstrators, whom he terms “anarchists.”
Israel has made clear to Russia its alarm over growing military ties between Moscow and Tehran, the Walla news site reports.
According to the outlet, on Tuesday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the two countries have been maintaining an “open, honest” dialogue and that Israel told the Russians they are concerned that advanced military technology is being shared.
“We don’t know which currency Russia is using to pay the Iranians for the military assistance they are receiving,” said Netanyahu, according to MKs present at the closed meeting.
Netanyahu also said that Russia has raised concerns over growing Israeli aid to Kyiv.
The prime minister explained that Israel is not supplying advanced air defense systems to Ukraine because it is afraid the technology will fall into Russian hands and be passed to Iran.
The COVID-19 vaccines are on track for a big recipe change this fall.
Today’s vaccines still contain the original coronavirus strain, the one that started the pandemic — even though that was long ago supplanted by mutated versions as the virus rapidly evolves.
Today, the US Food and Drug Administration’s scientific advisers are reviewing whether the next round of shots in the US should only include protection against the newest variants that are now dominant worldwide — a branch of the omicron family tree named XBB.
While infections have declined, the virus could be a real concern next winter, FDA’s vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks says as the daylong meeting began.
“We’re concerned that we may have another wave of COVID-19 during a time when the virus has further evolved, immunity of the population has waned further, and we move indoors for wintertime,” he says.
Visitors to Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo and the Israel Aquarium are evacuated as a large forest fire rages on the outskirts of the city.
At least 10 firefighting teams and four aircraft are working to quell the blaze.
Fire officials order visitors cleared from the two sites due to the fast-spreading fire, which is being fueled by strong winds.
שריפה גדולה בירושלים: החל פינוי גן החיות התנ"כי
לכל הפרטים – https://t.co/gYLE9qZvHC@Yossi_eli pic.twitter.com/2i7coT6Mud
— חדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) June 15, 2023
A statement from the zoo says that guests were evacuated as a precaution. “All the animals have been taken to safe areas and are under the supervision of the zoo’s caretakers.”
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister is expected to visit Tehran on Saturday, Iranian media reports, as the two Middle East powerhouses move to cement their recent landmark rapprochement after a seven-year rupture.
“The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, Faisal bin Farhan, will travel to Tehran on Saturday, June 17, to meet with officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Tasnim news agency says.
Iran’s government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi adds that bin Farhan’s visit would see him “take measures to open the embassy” of Saudi Arabia in Tehran.
Jahromi did not specify the exact date for the reopening of the embassy, which has been shut since 2016.
Tasnim has earlier cited “unnamed sources” as saying the Saudi embassy may reopen during the visit.
Closings arguments get underway in the federal trial of a truck driver who killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the nation’s deadliest attack on Jews.
Robert Bowers is charged with 63 criminal counts, including hate crimes resulting in death and obstruction of the free exercise of religion resulting in death. Some of the charges carry a potential death sentence.
Bowers’s attorneys did not call any witnesses or present any evidence after conceding at the trial’s outset that he attacked and killed worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. Seven people were injured in the attack, including five responding police officers.
Prosecutors say the 50-year-old was motivated by his hatred of Jewish people. Over 11 days of testimony, jurors learned that Bowers had extensively posted, shared or liked antisemitic and white supremacist content on Gab, a social media platform popular with the far right.
The defense has sought to raise questions about motive, suggesting to jurors that his rampage was not spurred by antisemitism but his delusional belief that Jews were committing genocide by helping refugees settle in the United States.
The jury could begin deliberating as early as this afternoon.
Assuming the jury returns a conviction, the trial would enter what’s expected to be a lengthy penalty phase, with the same jurors deciding Bowers’s sentence: life in prison or the death penalty. Bowers’s attorneys have focused their efforts on trying to save his life.
The High Court of Justice asks the government to justify why it allocated additional funds to religious schools as part of the budget and nothing to secular university students, the Ynet news site reports.
The request comes after the Students Union files a petition against the move.
“Increasing the budget for Torah studies institutions fatally harms the student community, it is unequal, creates gross discrimination toward one community, and is a clear attempt to bypass the law,” the union says.
The state prosecutor’s office sends a legal opinion to Justice Minister Yariv Levin, saying that a bill proposed this week to allow for administrative detention in a bid to fight crime in Arab communities presents a “threat to democracy.”
“This bill — similar to other initiatives being considered these days — constitutes a dramatic change in the world order in criminal enforcement in Israel, and also presents a deep and fundamental threat to the democratic character of country,” the opinion reads.
“Administrative arrest of a person presumed to be innocent — without sufficient evidence, without reasonable suspicion that a criminal offense was committed and relying only on intelligence information about future and abstract suspicions, and in fact without a time limit — constitutes a fatal violation of the right to freedom and dignity,” it says.
The letter calls on Levin to immediately reject the bill.
The Otzma Yehudit bill, which would give National Security Minister Ben Gvir the ability to authorize administrative detentions, is set to come up for a Knesset committee debate on Sunday.
The Knesset legislative committee will on Sunday discuss proposed legislation from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party that would allow the temporary jailing of suspects without charge or trial in order to clamp down on an ongoing wave of violent crime in Arab communities, the Haaretz daily reports
The bill would give Otzma Yehudit chairman — National Security Minister Ben Gvir — the ability to authorize administrative detentions, among a slew of other authorities.
According to the Otzma Yehudit proposal, Ben Gvir would be able to approve renewable administrative detentions for up to six months for anyone the minister thinks poses a danger to the public if requested by the police commissioner and with the approval of the attorney general, the state prosecutor or one of their deputies.
The controversial practice of administrative detention, currently used by the defense minister against terror suspects, allows individuals to be held without charge for six months at a time, renewable indefinitely, while allowing military prosecutors to keep suspects from being able to see the evidence against them.
Administrative detention is primarily used with Palestinians — about 1,000 of whom are currently held in custody under the practice. The practice has also been used with a handful of Jewish Israeli suspects in recent years, though Ben Gvir and other far-right leaders have come out against its employment in such cases.
Sergei Avramyan, 86, whose wife Inga, 82, was killed last month while trying to get him to safety during a rocket attack from Gaza, has died, the Walla news site reports.
No cause of death was given.
Sergei had limited mobility after a car accident left him partially paralyzed and with a leg amputated. He was unable to reach shelter unaided.
He was lightly wounded in the rocket attack on their Rehovot home that killed his wife.
“They didn’t have time to get to the reinforced room,” their grandson told the media at the time.
Two ballistic missiles fired by North Korea landed in waters within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, a Tokyo defense ministry official tells reporters.
“Two ballistic missiles fell inside the EEZ,” the official says. The zone extends up to 200 nautical miles from Japan’s coast, beyond the limits of its territorial waters.
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog visits Europe’s largest atomic power plant in southern Ukraine, where a dam recently burst and the start of a counteroffensive in the war by Kyiv’s forces have heightened safety risks.
The visit is announced by Ukraine’s national nuclear energy company, Energoatom, in a Telegram post.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, met Tuesday in Kyiv with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss concerns about the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
The IAEA has repeatedly expressed alarm about the facility, which is one of the 10 biggest in the world, amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe. The agency has officials stationed at the plant, which is still run by its Ukrainian staff.
The plant has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire since Russia launched its war on Ukraine in February 2022 and seized the facility shortly after.
Last week, the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine’s partially Russian-occupied Kherson region added a new concern. The dam, further down the Dnieper River, helped keep water in a reservoir that cools the plant’s reactors.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang meets with visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as Beijing tries to elevate relations and increase its overall presence in the Middle East.
Li, who took office just this spring with little foreign policy experience, calls Abbas “an old friend of the Chinese people” who has made “important contributions to the promotion of China-Palestinian relations.”
The meeting came a day after Abbas was greeted with full military honors by Xi Jinping, China’s president and head of the ruling Communist Party.
The sides then announced the formation of a “strategic partnership,” paving the way to boost China’s influence in the region at a time when Beijing’s chief rival for global influence, the United States, is seen as withdrawing from the region following the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and complications in ties with regional power Saudi Arabia.
Kyiv reports progress in its newly launched counteroffensive, despite strong resistance from Russian troops.
“There is a gradual but steady advance of the armed forces,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar tells a briefing.
“At the same time, the enemy is putting up powerful resistance” on the southern front, she says, referring to mined fields, kamikaze drones, and intense shelling.
After months of building expectations Ukraine early this month launched its offensive in the south and in the east.
Around the frontline hotspot of Bakhmut, “the enemy is pulling up additional reserves and is trying with all its might to prevent the advance of Ukrainian forces.”
Still, Malyar reported an advance of more than three kilometers (1.8 miles) in the area of Bakhmut.
Ukrainian forces have recaptured seven settlements and more than 100 square kilometers of territory, says Oleksiy Gromov of the Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff.
Russia claims to have repelled all Ukrainian assaults.
Renegade Likud MK Tally Gotliv warns her party against sanctioning her after she defies party policy and refused to withdraw her candidacy to be elected to a key judicial panel.
Gotliv was defeated soundly in yesterday’s vote after throwing the coalition into a tailspin by refusing to pull her maverick candidacy.
Earlier today, Likud minister Miki Zohar said Gotliv could be suspended from the faction if she doesn’t “fall in line.”
But Gotliv issues her own threat to the party, telling the Ynet news site that Likud has no right to sanction her because there is no obligation for party discipline when there is a secret vote.
“Not only can’t they banish me from the faction, believe me — it’s better for them if I am not suspended,” says the firebrand freshman MK.
“I say to them in no uncertain terms, I say it will eight exclamation points, they won’t place any sanctions on me,” she says.
Gotliv claims she has “immense power outside with right-wing voters,” and says that she is “sure that right-wing voters will take to the streets” for her.
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