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“I’m so proud to be mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population anywhere outside of Israel — and even prouder to march side by side our Jewish community in today’s Celebrate Israel parade, New York Mayor Eric Adams said during the march on Sunday.

“We’re gonna drive down hate and antisemitism,” he said.

I’m so proud to be mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population anywhere outside of Israel — and even prouder to march side by side our Jewish community in today’s #CelebrateIsrael parade. pic.twitter.com/QVp4AKBTKW

— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) June 4, 2023

The post WATCH: ‘We’re gonna drive down hate and antisemitism,’ NYC mayor says at Celebrate Israel parade appeared first on World Israel News.

“Those who share our view that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state must join forces,” says Israel’s intelligence minister.

By Shirit Avitan Cohen, Israel Hayom via JNS

Members of the European Conservatives and Reformists alliance arrived in Israel over the weekend to hold one of the group’s two annual conferences in Jerusalem.

Despite being part of the European Parliament, the ECR (of which Israel’s Likud Party is also a member), disagrees with Brussels’ stance that the European Union should not recognize the city as Israel’s capital. Indeed, no EU country has so far moved its embassy to Jerusalem.

The alliance has 66 members from 14 parties from around the world. Its president is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, known for her warm relationship with Israel and who only a few months ago received an official request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to consider moving the Italian embassy to Jerusalem.

While Israel’s Foreign Ministry boycotts some of the ECR’s extreme-right member parties, the alliance decided to hold its event in Israel despite this, according to an ECR official.

At a conference meeting on Sunday, ECR Secretary General Antonio Giordano revealed some of the pressures exerted on the alliance not to come to Israel:

“When we decided to organize the annual event in Jerusalem, shortly after the attack that took place in April, we were asked if we were sure of this decision. Our response was decisive: If not now, when?

“The people of the right show solidarity with each other not when there is power, to share it, but when you have to stand by friends in trouble,” he said.

During the weekend, alliance delegates were hosted by Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel on behalf of the Likud, and also visited Jerusalem holy sites.

“Those who share our view that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state must join forces,” Gamliel told alliance delegates. “We must operate proactively to preserve Jerusalem’s status.”

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“I don’t hold those views today and I will act in a completely professional manner in the prime minister’s office,” Zwick said.

By Associated Press

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed a new media adviser who has tweeted critically against President Joe Biden, the far-left daily Haaretz reported.

The appointment comes at a time when U.S.-Israel relations are strained.

Gilad Zwick, a journalist with a conservative Israeli TV station, has in his tweets called Biden “unfit” to rule and said that he was “slowly but surely destroying America.” He also posted tweets suggesting he supported former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 U.S. election was rigged. At least one of the tweets that was live earlier was deleted later in the day.

Zwick did not respond to a request for comment but tweeted on Monday in English that he was a private citizen when writing the posts about Biden.

“I don’t hold those views today and I will act in a completely professional manner in the prime minister’s office,” he said.

I was a private citizen when I wrote the tweets about President Biden. I don’t hold those views today and I will act in a completely professional manner in the Prime Minister’s Office

— Gilad Zwick (@giladzw) June 5, 2023

Zwick had previously worked for Israel Hayom, a pro-Netanyahu daily. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment.

Zwick’s appointment comes as ties between Israel and its closest ally, the United States, are fraught over a contentious Israeli government plan to overhaul the judiciary and over the government’s socalled ultranationalist character.

Amid the tensions, Biden has so far denied Netanyahu a typically customary invitation to the White House after his election win late last Novmber.

Critics accuse Netanyahu of gradually shifting Israel from a bipartisan matter to a wedge issue in U.S. politics. They point to him appearing to openly support Republican candidates as well as his 2015 speech to Congress which was seen as a slight to the Obama administration over its nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu says Israel’s bond with the U.S. is unbreakable and downplays any rifts as disagreements between friends.

Last month, Israel’s parliament hosted U.S. House speaker Kevin McCarthy, who became just the second House speaker to address the Knesset, after Republican Newt Gingrich in 1998.

“After 75 years of friendship between the United States and Israel, I know this to be true: the best days for Israel—and our unbreakable bond—are ahead of us,” McCarthy told the Knesset in his historic address. He also announced the establishment of a “House-Knesset Parliamentary Friendship Group – so we can continue to strengthen our bonds, build mutual understanding as elected representatives, and work better together.”

World Israel News contributed to this report.

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More and more, Zelensky seems likely to be replaced in Kiev.

“If an Egyptian dies at the border, no one will care about him like they care about Israelis [who are killed],” the perpetrator reportedly said shortly before committing the deadly terror attack.

By World Israel News Staff

The Egyptian police officer who infiltrated into Israel and killed three IDF soldiers was named as 22-year-old Muhammad Salah Ibrahim by Arabic-language media on Monday.

While both Egyptian and Israeli officials have avoided naming terror as the motivation for the shootings, a look at Ibrahim’s social media accounts reveal that he expressed sentiments hostile towards the State of Israel.

During the 2021 Israel-Gaza Operation Guardian of the Walls clash, Ibrahim responded from a tweet by then-Vice President Mike Pence which read “America stands with Israel.”

“Allah stands with Palestine,” read a reply to Pence that Ibrahim reposted on his Facebook page, along with the hashtag “Gaza under attack.”

According to Hebrew-language media, Ibrahim was drafted to the Egyptian security forces in June 2022. His service was plagued by several lengthy unexcused absences along with repeated complaints from Ibrahim that he was suffering psychologically and physically.

Ibrahim’s friends told a local media outlet that he was upset over what he perceived as a substandard response from the Egyptian government to the recent slaying of a fellow police officer who also served on the Israel-Egyptian border. Ibrahim’s colleague was presumably killed by drug traffickers.

“If an Egyptian dies at the border, no one will care about him like they care about Israelis [who are killed],” his friends reported Ibrahim as saying.

Although his friends have attempted to frame the killings as possibly motivated by frustration over the lack of attention regarding his colleague’s death, Ibrahim was carrying a Quran at the time of his attack on IDF soldiers.

The Egyptian government and media outlets have downplayed the attack and falsified critical details about the incident.

In a carefully worded statement, the Egyptian government insinuated that Ibrahim had killed two Israeli soldiers who were guarding a remote outpost in Israeli territory, Lia Ben Nun and Ori Yitzhak Iluz, during a mutual exchange of fire.

Initial Israeli ballistics tests found that neither Ben Nun nor Iluz fired their weapons, indicating that Ibrahim had immediately shot and immobilized them.

Hours later, Ibrahim killed another Israeli soldier, Ohad Dahan, during a gun battle after he was discovered by troops in Israeli territory.

Ibrahim had in his possession multiple guns, knives and rounds of ammunition, suggesting that he was intending to carry out a large-scale attack in Israel before he was shot and killed by the IDF.

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Residents of the Washington D.C. metroplex area and surrounding areas were met with a loud explosion on Sunday afternoon. It turns out that the sound was the sonic boom of two military aircraft in pursuit of a Cessna plane with an unresponsive pilot.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) authorized two F-16 jets out of Joint Base Andrews to fly at supersonic speeds to catch up with the plane. The Continental U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) continued to try and establish contact with the pilot until the aircraft crashed near the George Washington National Forest in Virginia.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that the Cessna Citation took off from Elizabethton, Tennessee, bound for Islip, New York, and crashed in the sparsely populated town of Montebello, Virginia, around 3 p.m.

The Cessna was registered to Encore Motors of Melbourne Inc. and was carrying four passengers, including John Rumpel’s daughter, 2-year-old granddaughter, her nanny, and the pilot, who were returning to their home in East Hampton, New York, after visiting Rumpel in North Carolina.

When the aircraft pierced the no-fly zone in the Capitol region, the U.S. Capitol went into “AirCon,” and security officials at the Capitol briefly flipped the alert posture from “Green” to “Yellow.” The White House official said President Biden was briefed on the incident.

The sonic boom was heard in the Washington, D.C. metroplex area and as far east as the Eastern Shore of Maryland and as far west as Manassas, Virginia, leading to rumors circulating on social media.

A year after the life-altering surgery, Yael Keller ran a 10K race with Guy Damari in Tel Aviv.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Just one year after Yael Keller donated a kidney to Guy Damari, they ran a 10K marathon together in a feat of friendship and endurance that for one of them, at least, had been unthinkable for the last several years, Israel Hayom reported.

Damari, 29, was diagnosed with a kidney disease four years earlier, and by 2022 his condition had deteriorated to the point that he urgently needed a transplant.

“This is where my amazing angel Yael Keller came into the picture,” he said. “Yael bravely decided to donate a kidney to someone she didn’t know and help him get a new life.”

Keller said she decided to become a donor after her brother had altruistically given one of his kidneys to a stranger. It takes quite some fortitude to go through the lengthy medical process, and Yael’s resolve was tested immediately when it was discovered that she was anemic. The mother of five from Tekoa had to be treated for this condition for a year before she could continue with all the necessary tests, but she was determined to go through with it.

Although the rules are quite strict in that donors are not allowed to communicate with the recipients before the operation, Keller wanted to make a connection with Damari. She sent him a song through the Hadassah Medical Center’s transplant coordinator before the surgery.

“Yael sent me and my family the Hatikva 6 song, ‘What Will Be, Will Be,’ and that song has accompanied us, with great emotion, ever since,” Damari said.

“All that I knew about him was that he was a young man with a very supportive family,” Keller said. “His reaction [to the song] were amazing, and I understood that this was a sensitive and good man.”

The surgery was a success, and when they finally met afterwards, they found they had a lot more in common than a kidney.

“We’re both lighthearted, love to laugh and are a bit cynical,” said Keller, who is a teacher by day and an ambulance driver by night.

“We have a fantastic relationship, we’re great friends,” Damari agreed, adding that he’s gone on several day trips with her family over the year.

It was Damari’s idea to take on a marathon together.

“I met up with Yael and her terrific husband several months ago and we discovered that we both used to run, before the surgery. So I suggested a kind of mutual challenge, that we should run a route together,” he said with a smile.

They trained together for a few months and then entered the 10K race at the Tel Aviv Playtika Marathon.

“It was a crazy and emotional closing of the circle,” Damari said. “I always feel that I’ve lucked out. Yael is proof that there are miracles, light, goodness, and unconditional love in the world. She is my personal miracle, a person who spreads endless giving.

“The marathon was terrific, and throughout the entire route, Yael spurred us on with all her might, motivating us forward.”

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Lord Jim O’Neill, who coined the acronym BRICS in 2001, talks to us about the future of the bloc and its implications for Africa

Mu’ad Hamed murdered Malachi Rosenfeld and injured three others in a drive-by shooting in 2015.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Palestinian who murdered Malachi Rosenfeld and injured three others in a drive-by shooting in Samaria in June 2015 was sentenced Sunday to two life terms in prison and ordered to pay a million shekels in compensation.

Mu’ad Hamed had been incarcerated in a Palestinian prison since the attack, but then escaped last year. He immediately joined a Hamas cell and was planning to carry out a terror attack in Jerusalem over the Passover holiday when he was captured with his group in a joint operation of the IDF and Shabak, who received an intelligence tip regarding his location.

In addition to the conviction on the murder and attempted murder charges, Hamed, 33, was found guilty of membership and activity in an illegal terrorist organization (Hamas) along other security offenses, including a prior shooting attack on an ambulance in Samaria.

The NIS 1,090,000 fine (just under $300,000) is to be divided between those injured and the Rosenfeld family. It is unclear from where the money would come to pay the court-ordered compensation.

Rosenfeld, 27, from the village of Kochav HaShachar, was returning with his friends from a basketball game when Hamed fired over a dozen bullets at them from a car filled with his fellow operatives. According to the prosecution, Hamed was the founder of the military unit, whose purpose was to search out and attack Israelis.

Shai Maymon, one of those injured in the attack, tweeted that the sentence “was no comfort. It’s a little bit of justice. I hope he rots in jail his whole life, while we remember Malachi and sanctify life.” He added his thanks to the security forces and the military prosecutor’s office for their efforts in catching and convicting the terrorist.

“I think that every devastated family would secretly want a death sentence, but we are realistic,” Rosenfeld’s father Eliezer told Ynet after the sentence was handed down. “I hope that after the sentence, the conditions in prison will be more difficult. Especially for the terrorists who are the heads of the snake. [Hamed] engaged in terrorism 24 hours a day, he advise[d] the terrorists how to act.”

“He is deep into the extermination of Jews,” Rosenfeld added. “They need to deal with him with the harshest hand, because he’ll continue even from prison. He is relatively young and letting a thing like this grow would be a disaster.”

Three of Hamed’s accomplices were caught soon after the murder, with two of them sentenced in 2017 to life in prison and one to life plus 30 years. One of them – the mastermind – remains free. According to the original 2015 indictment, Ahmed Najar, a Hamas terrorist living in Jordan, had ordered the strike and supplied the money to buy the weapons.

Najer had been serving six life sentences in Israel but was released four years earlier in the Gilad Shalit deal, which saw 1,027 terrorists exchanged for the IDF soldier held prisoner by Hamas for five years in the Gaza Strip.

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Brazil is backing Argentina’s entry into the bank, its head Dilma Rousseff said