Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu looks set to become the first sitting Israeli Prime Minister to visit Singapore.
According to a Jerusalem Post report, the 67-year-old announced he would make the trip at a cabinet meeting on Sunday (30 October). It would be a reciprocal visit for the one that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made to Israel in April.
The Republic is one of four countries Netanyahu plans to visit, in addition to Australia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. No exact dates were given.
“Israel’s international relations are spreading in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and many other places,” said Netanyahu. “We realise that this development flows from Israel’s technological and economic strength on one hand, and its security and intelligence capabilities on the other.”
In November 1986, Israeli president Chaim Herzog paid a three-day official visit to Singapore, sparking protests by various political groups in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.
According to a Straits Times report from 1986, they urged Singapore to call off Herzog’s visit by taking into account the prevailing sympathy of Muslims in the region towards the Palestinians’ struggle against the Israeli government.
The United Nations cultural and heritage body, Unesco, has condemned Israel’s “escalating aggressions” regarding the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City, known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount, prompting a furious reaction from Israeli politicians.
A resolution passed on Thursday denied the importance of the site to the Jewish faith by referring to it and the al-Aqsa mosque only by their Muslim names, the politicians said.
The site has been a flashpoint between Muslims and rightwing Jews over the past two years in particular, although tensions in the vicinity stretch back decades.
The resolution was backed by 24 countries, with six opposing it and 26 abstaining. The US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia voted against the resolution; Russia and China were among those backing it.
While affirming the importance of the Old City to all three monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Islam and Christianity – the resolution failed to acknowledge Jewish connections to Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif, Israel said.
The al-Aqsa mosque – the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina – and the iconic Dome of the Rock stand on a plaza on the eastern edge of the Old City, and are under the control of an Islamic trust called the Waqf.
The Western Wall, below the concourse, is regarded as the holiest spot in Judaism as the last remnant of the temple that once stood there. Jews can visit the plaza above the wall, but are forbidden by law from praying, reciting religious texts or entering Muslim holy sites there.
The resolution said Muslims’ freedom of worship was being curtailed by “escalating aggressions and illegal measures”. It deplored the “continuous storming of al-Aqsa mosque and al-Haram al-Sharif by the Israeli rightwing extremists and uniformed forces … [and] forceful entering by so-called ‘Israeli Antiquities’ officials”.
In March 2015, a leaked EU report said tensions over al-Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount were partly to blame for a spike in violence, including shootings and stabbings, over the previous six months.
Uri Ariel, a rightwing minister in the Israeli coalition government, called on Israel to respond to the Unesco motion by stepping up activities at the site.
“Especially now, it’s on us as a government to act in defiance of these decisions and to strengthen the Temple Mount and the Jewish presence on the site holiest to the Jewish people – the Temple Mount,” he said in a letter to the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
The Labour party leader, Isaac Herzog, wrote on Facebook: “Unesco betray their mission, and give a bad name to diplomacy and the international institutions. Whoever wants to rewrite history, to distort fact, and to completely invent the fantasy that the Western Wall and Temple Mount have no connection to the Jewish people, is telling a terrible lie that only serves to increase hatred.”
Before the vote, the British Jewish organisation Yachad, which campaigns for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and for a two-state solution, condemned the resolution as “an inflammatory denial of Jewish history” which “serves only to set back the cause of peace in the region by playing into the hands of those on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who see it as a holy war”.
The motion was submitted by the Palestinians supported by Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Sudan.
A similar resolution in April passed with 33 votes to six, and was supported by a number of European countries led by France. This time France abstained amid a heavy lobbying campaign by Israel.
KUALA LUMPUR: Tentera Israel menahan kapal layar, Zaytouna-Olivia, bersama tiga anak kapal dan 10 aktivis wanita termasuk wakil tunggal Malaysia, Dr Fauziah Mohd Hassan, dalam misi ‘Women’s Boat To Gaza'(WBG), semalam (5 Okt).
Humanitarian Care Malaysia (MyCARE), dalam kenyataan malam semalam (5 Okt), mengesahkan kapal itu, yang dalam perjalanan menuju ke Gaza, ditahan pada pukul 2.58 petang waktu tempatan (8.58 malam waktu Malaysia/Singapura).
Kapal Zaytouna itu dijangka akan ditunda oleh tentera Israel ke Pelabuhan Ashdod, menurut kenyataan itu.
Dr Fauziah bersama anggota misi bantuan kemanusiaan WBG itu mengikuti misi mencabar sekatan Israel ke atas Gaza setelah laluan darat ke negara yang dizalimi itu dikepung dan laluan masuk dari sempadan Mesir-Gaza di Arafah, turut ditutup.
Delegasi wanita dari negara lain adalah dari Tunisia, Israel, Algeria, Kanada, Turki, Amerika Syarikat, Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand dan Australia sebagai tanda solidariti kepada rakyat Palestin.
Pelayaran WDB bermula pada 8 malam, 14 September lalu (waktu tempatan Barcelona) dari pelabuhan Vell dan berhenti di Ajaccio, Perancis (bagi pusingan pertama) pada 19 September sebelum meneruskan perjalanan ke Messina, Itali (pusingan kedua).
Justeru, MyCare akan mengadakan satu sidang media berhubung perkara itu hari ini (6 Okt).
New York got a glimpse on Tuesday of Benjamin Netanyahu’s massive security detail, when the prime minister answered the call of nature accompanied by 20 guards.
Netanyahu went out for dinner with his wife, Sara, at the Harry Cipriani restaurant, one of the city’s swankiest. Before his arrival, the joint was scoped out by 20 security guards, and then when the prime minister himself arrived he was accompanied by another 20 agents, the New York Post reported.
The restaurant only seats about 100, so Netanyahu’s entourage took up a lot of space — not to mention the other guards placed discreetly and not so discreetly around the venue, both inside and out.
Sara and Bibi’s quiet dinner was interrupted when the premier needed to take a bathroom break. The toilet was a few feet away in the adjacent Sherry-Netherland Hotel, and, aware of the risks of peeing alone, his-ever vigilant security detail knew the drill.
“Around 20 security guards got up with Bibi and a few went into the bathroom with him. One watched the door, and the rest lined up with their arms up to form a human barricade, so nobody could enter the bathroom or even get close,” a bystander told the Post. “He must be the most protected man in the world right now.”
Celebrity diners treated to the routine included Charlie Rose, billionaire Ronald Perelman, Barbara Winston, Jason Binn and Iris Apfel.
Netanyahu is in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday — his eighth speech at the annual plenary session.
