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Israeli cops and firefighters barred by far-right minister from Wexner fellowships at Harvard University
(JTA) – Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is barring government employees under his supervision — including police officers, firefighters and prison officials — from participating in a longstanding and prestigious fellowship program for Israeli civil servants at Harvard University.
Ben-Gvir issued the ban due to what he calls the left-wing political bent of the program’s funder, the Ohio-based Wexner Foundation.
A far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Ben-Gvir tweeted Monday that he made the decision to sever ties between the police and the foundation because of the foundation’s “involvement and cooperation with distinctly left-wing groups like Breaking the Silence.”
Both the Wexner Foundation and Breaking the Silence, an advocacy group that publishes testimonies by Israeli combat soldiers of alleged human rights abuses in the West Bank, have long been targets of the Israeli right.
The foundation has rejected Ben Gvir’s allegation of ideological bias. “We are not now nor have we ever been associated with any political party or ‘movement,’” a foundation spokesperson told the news outlet eJewishPhilanthropy.
Israel’s right-leaning Channel 14 news station reported Tuesday that the ban also applies to firefighters and prison officials. Five police officers who were slated to attend the fellowship program at Harvard next year will no longer be able to do so, according to eJewishPhilanthropy.
The foundation’s money comes from American Jewish philanthropist Les Wexner, a billionaire who made his fortune off retail brands including Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. The foundation has lately faced backlash over Wexner’s personal and financial ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, even as it continues its many activities focused on the development of Jewish leaders in a wide range of fields.
More than 250 Israelis have graduated from Wexner’s leadership programs, which involve a period of study at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The list of alumni features former Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi; Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet security agency; and Yair Golan, a former top-ranking general and left-wing lawmaker; in addition to many mid-level officials in Israeli’s police and security establishment.
Ben Gvir is not the first on the Israeli right to target the foundation. Some of his political allies say that the fellowships work to spread progressive ideas imported from the United States across Israel.
Skepticism of programs serving Israelis but funded by American Jewish philanthropy has manifested regularly since Netanyahu’s most recent government, which includes far-right partners in senior roles, took office last year. One Netanyahu ally hoped to block a large cross-section of mainstream American donors from involvement in Israeli education but resigned from office before implementing the plan.
Ben-Gvir’s concern over the effect of American ideas on senior Israeli officers in some ways mirrors the criticism from some on the American left. The anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace has long campaigned against official trips to Israel taken by U.S. police officials, saying that these exchanges bolster a kind of policing that leads to brutality toward civilians. Israeli officials and the U.S. police delegations, as well as the trip organizers, deny those allegations, saying the trips do not teach physical tactics and mostly consist of lectures, meetings and tours.
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The post Israeli cops and firefighters barred by far-right minister from Wexner fellowships at Harvard University appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.