Hundreds of Jewish settlers are engaged in violence against Palestinians and Israeli soldiers who get in their way, Israel’s top general in the occupied West Bank said in remarks published yesterday.
“In the past, only a few dozen individuals took part in such activity but today that number has grown into the hundreds. That’s a very significant change,” Israeli Major-General Gadi Shamni said in an interview with Haaretz newspaper.
“These hundreds are engaged in conspiratorial actions against Palestinians and the security forces. It’s a very grave phenomenon,” he said, accusing settler leaders and rabbis, whom he did not name, of encouraging vigilante violence.
Shamni’s comments echoed the findings of a recent UN report that recorded 222 incidents of settler violence in the West Bank in the first half of this compared with 291 in all of last year.
“The majority of people here act normally. We’re talking about a hard core of a few hundred activists among some 300,000 Jews who live beyond the Green Line,” Shamni said, referring to the frontier between Israel and the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Israeli police say detectives were questioning Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for the eighth time over allegations that he accepted cash from a Jewish-American businessman and claimed false travel expenses before he became premier in 2006.
Olmert denies wrongdoing.
Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said officers arrived at Olmert’s official Jerusalem residence at 10am yesterday and were scheduled to question him for about two hours.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number