The Times of Israel is liveblogging Friday’s events as they happen.
Netanyahu says hoping hostage deal can be finalized in a few days
WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes a deal can be completed in a few days to release more Israeli hostages held by Palestinian Islamist terror group Hamas.
He makes the comments during an interview on Newsmax show “The Record with Greta Van Susteren,” a day after a senior Israeli official briefing reporters in Washington said a deal could be reached in the next week or two but was not a matter of days.
Slovakia festival starring Kanye West canceled amid backlash over ‘Heil Hitler’
The Slovakia festival due to welcome Kanye West next week has called off the event following the uproar over the US rapper’s May release of a song glorifying Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Before the July 20 gig was canceled, Bratislava’s Rubicon hip hop festival was set to be West’s only confirmed live performance in Europe this year.
Though he has won 24 Grammy Awards over the course of his career, the erratic rapper has become notorious in recent years for his increasingly antisemitic and hate-filled rants.
West, who has legally changed his name to the shorthand “Ye,” released the song “Heil Hitler” on May 8, the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
In the wake of the announcement of West’s appearance at Rubicon, thousands of people signed a petition against the gig.
In a statement on Instagram, the festival’s organizers say the decision to cancel the event is “due to media pressure and the withdrawal of several artists and partners.”
“This was not an easy decision,” the organizers say, without drawing a direct line between the rapper’s planned appearance and the cancellations.
Contacted by AFP, the Rubicon festival doesn’t offer further explanations.
Netanyahu once tried to get Germany’s Merkel to fire her top adviser over pro-Palestinian demands, report reveals
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to get Germany’s leader to fire a top adviser more than a decade ago, a new German report reveals.
The incident happened during negotiations for a submarine deal between the countries, a deal that has since become mired in a major corruption probe that has ensnared top Netanyahu advisers, but not the premier himself.
According to the Panorama TV magazine, during talks in 2010 and 2011 between Israel and German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp, then-German chancellor Angela Merkel’s top foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen demanded that any deal to supply the Jewish state with submarines be conditioned on Jerusalem halting all settlement construction in the West Bank and agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state — conditions that angered Netanyahu.
The report cites multiple sources, including Heusgen himself, former Israeli ambassadors to Germany Yacov Hadas-Handelsman and Yoram Ben-Zeev, and former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad.
It says Netanyahu’s top confidant Ron Dermer — then a staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office and today the strategic affairs minister — approached Berlin’s then-ambassador to Israel, Harald Kindermann, and demanded that Merkel fire Heusgen. Dermer reportedly stressed at the time that he was acting on orders and not of his own initiative.
The pressure campaign reached new heights when Germany’s Bild tabloid published a story in December 2012 in which an unnamed Israeli government official was cited as blasting Merkel for leaving too much of the policy-making to Heusgen, who “only wants to talk about settlement policy.”
Panorama says it isn’t known who that official was, but the program implies it might have been Dermer, noting that in 2011, Dermer was given authority to act as a liaison to Germany’s Axel Springer Group, which publishes Bild.
Merkel didn’t heed the demand to sack Heusgen, who remained her adviser until 2017 when he became Berlin’s envoy to the UN.
But the report says Germany did end up dropping the demand for concessions to the Palestinians as conditions for the submarine deal, which was followed up by more deals for submarines and corvettes.
After government missed deadline, High Court threatens to issue injunction Sunday against new method to fire AG
After the government missed a deadline today for replying to a request for an injunction against a new method it seeks to introduce to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, the High Court of Justice says if a reply isn’t filed by Sunday morning, it will issue such an injunction.
The request for an injunction was made by the Movement for Quality Government.
The government was previously told to respond by noon today. According to the Walla news site, not only did it not reply — it didn’t even appoint an attorney to represent it in the court case, after receiving approval to be represented by private counsel rather than by the attorney general.
“If a reply isn’t submitted by Sunday at 10 a.m., I will see this as acceptance of, or at least lack of objection to, the request,” writes Justice Noam Sohlberg. “In accordance, an injunction will be issued as requested, without taking a stance on the subject matter of the arguments made in the request.”