Deputy Mayor for Foreign Relations, Economic Development and Tourism Fleur Hassan-Nahoum on the site of planned expansion of the US Embassy in Jerusalem (photo credit: Courtesy)
When former US president Donald Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem three years ago, he upheld a promise given decades earlier and fueled a vision of Israel’s capital as a world metropolis. The hope was that once the US does it, other nations would follow and Jerusalemites would live in what once seemed a Messianic dream: a city filled with embassies, consulates and cultural centers hard at work building the best possible relations between the Jewish state and the nations of the earth.
Two new permits the city green-lighted recently – one an expansion of the current location on the slopes of Arnona to a five-floor building and the other a construction of a 10-floor building as part of a larger compound at northern Arnona (or Talpiot) on the corners of Hebron Road, Daniel Yanovski St. and Hanoch Albek St. – envision the US Embassy being an “anchor” that will transform the entire urban space around it into a diplomatic sector, Deputy Mayor for Foreign Relations, Economic Development and Tourism Fleur Hassan-Nahoum said.
Police close off a street after an explosion near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on January 29, 2021. (Photo by Sajjad HUSSAIN / AFP)
A blast outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Friday damaged cars but did not cause injuries, police said.
Israeli authorities were treating the explosion as a suspected attack, The Times of Israel has learned, and was stepping up security precautions at missions around the world.
The district around the embassy was sealed off after the explosion and police and bomb disposal experts took over the scene.
A police statement described it as a “very low-intensity improvised device” that blew out the windows on three nearby cars and said a preliminary investigation “suggests a mischievous attempt to create a sensation.”
Stores in Jerusalem's Mamilla mall are seen closed amid the ongoing coronavirus lockdown, on January 14, 2021. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Israel, leading the world in coronavirus vaccinations, is also the leader in the amount of time spent in coronavirus lockdowns, as well as among the highest-ranking in the stringency of its response to the pandemic.
The country scored 86.28 – higher than any other country – on the Containment and Health Index developed by the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) project.
Joe Biden's incoming Asia policy czar was a top leader at a nonprofit group that was bankrolled by the head of a Chinese propaganda front group and partnered with a Chinese foreign mission.
Kurt Campbell, a former Obama State Department official and businessman, was until August 2020 listed as board vice chairman of the U.S.-China Strong Foundation, ostensibly a nonprofit group that promotes student language exchanges with Beijing but whose leaders included prominent members of the Chinese government’s overseas propaganda fronts, according to State Department and Department of Justice records.
Campbell is slated to serve as the chief coordinator for President Joe Biden’s Asia policy on the National Security Council, but his leadership role with the foundation is raising concerns with China hawks in Washington. The foundation has promoted the Chinese army and China's Belt and Road Initiative—deemed a national security threat by U.S. officials
The Biden administration is tapping for a top intelligence post a Palestinian-American who spent years at the forefront of efforts to boycott Israel and danced in front of a banner calling Israel an apartheid state.
The selection of Maher Bitar to be the senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council is already generating concerns that he will use the post to diminish intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel.
Bitar spent years leading anti-Israel organizations that promote the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which wages economic warfare on Israel. In college, he was a leader in Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-BDS campus group known for bullying Jewish students. A 2006 yearbook picture from Georgetown University, where Bitar attended school, shows him posing before a sign that reads 'Divest from Israel Apartheid.'
IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi speaks at a ceremony in the military's Kirya headquarters in Tel Aviv on June 18, 2020. (Israel Defense Forces)
IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi says he has directed the military to prepare operational plans for the possibility that it will need to strike Iran to block its nuclear program.
“Iran can decide that it wants to advance to a bomb, either covertly or in a provocative way. In light of this basic analysis, I have ordered the IDF to prepare a number of operational plans, in addition to the existing ones. We are studying these plans and we will develop them over the next year,” Kohavi says.
He adds: “The government will of course be the one to decide if they should be used. But these plans need to be on the table, in existence and trained for.”
The Israeli national flag flutters as apartments are seen in the background in the Israeli settlement of Efrat in the West Bank August 18, 2020. (photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
Israel must restrain from settlement and annexation activity and the Palestinians should hold back from incitement and terror payments, United State envoy Richard Mills told the United Nations Security Council on Monday.
'The US will urge Israel's government and the Palestinian Authority to avoid unilateral steps that make the two state solution more difficult,' Mills said.
He was the first representative of the newly inaugurated Biden administration to address the UNSC and to describe the approach of the new White House to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Illustrative. An F-35 jet maneuvers during a graduation ceremony for pilots who have completed the IAF Flight Course, at the Hatzerim Air Base in the Negev desert, December 26, 2018. (Aharon Krohn/Flash90)
F-35 stealth fighter jets were spotted over southern Lebanon and Beirut, where the Hezbollah terror group maintains a major presence, throughout the day on Monday, amid a recent uptick in reported Israeli strikes on Iranian and Iran-linked forces in nearby Syria.
As the aircraft, which were widely claimed to be Israeli, are capable of flying undetected, the decision to fly them low enough in the sky to make them clearly visible from the ground appeared to be a deliberate message to Hezbollah of Israel’s air superiority.
Israeli police enforcing lockdown restrictions in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, January 25, 2021. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
The government’s coronavirus czar on Monday warned the third nationwide lockdown may not be Israel’s last, citing the fast-spreading mutations of the virus.
The British variant of the virus is circulating widely in Israel, accounting for nearly half of recent cases, according to health officials. Twenty-seven cases of the South African strain have been found in the country, in addition to four cases of a California mutation. Officials fear the variants might prove resistant to the vaccines.
Sen. Rand Paul. R-Ky., listens to testimony during the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing on COVID-19 May 12, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Toni L. Sandys-Pool/Getty Images)
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Sunday declared there was a “great deal of evidence of fraud” and illegal election law changes that merit a “thorough investigation.”
In a contentious exchange on ABC News’ “This Week With George Stephanopolous,” Paul said liberal journalists are calling anybody that believes the election was stolen is a fool to bring up the subject.
'There are two sides to every story. George, you're forgetting who you are. You’re forgetting who you are as a journalist if you think there's only one side,' Paul said.
'You're inserting yourself into the story to say I’m a liar because I want to look at election fraud and I want to look at secretaries of state who illegally changed the voter laws without the permission of their state legislatures. That is incontrovertible, it happened.
'And you can't just sweep it under the rug and say, oh, nothing to see here, and everybody is a liar and you're a fool if you bring this up. You’re inserting yourself into the story. A journalist would hear both sides and there are two sides of a story.'
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