"Shortly after his previous statement threatening to revive the judicial overhaul, Justice Minister Yariv Levin issues an effective ultimatum for the Supreme Court to take up a proposal he floated in August for choosing its next chief justice, which the court’s then-interim president rejected.
“The fair compromise proposal that I offered the judges is still on the table,” he says. “I once again emphasize what I’ve said the entire way — the way of consent and dialogue is and remains the best and most preferable. At the same time, there will be no acceptance of unilateral diktats that trample the majority of the people.”
If accepted at the time, Levin’s proposal would have delayed now interim Supreme Court President Isaac Amit’s ascension to the post, as the justice minister viewed him as too liberal, with Levin instead calling for conservative Justice Yosef Elron to first serve as the court’s top judge for a year before Amit, who would then serve another year."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/in-effective-ultimatum-levin-tells-court-to-accept-his-plan-for-appointing-next-chief/
"In an extended attack on the High Court posted to Facebook, Justice Minister Yariv Levin appears to threaten the revival of the government’s frozen judicial overhaul program.
“Immediately after the outbreak of the war, the coalition announced the freezing of all engagement with legal reform. At the time, I thought it was wrong to engage in controversial issues when the country was in a multi-front war,” Levin states.
However, the High Court has “effectively stripped me of the authority granted to me by law to set the agenda of the Judicial Selection Committee,” he claims, condemning the court’s recent ruling that he must hold a vote for a new chief justice by January 16..."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/left-us-no-choice-levin-seems-to-threaten-resumption-of-judicial-overhaul-push/
"The leader of the Syrian Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), who spearheaded the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime, spoke Saturday about Israel for the first time since taking over the country.
In an interview with the Syrian TV news channel, Ahmad al-Sharaa, who is better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani, said that Israel has “no more excuses” to carry out airstrikes in Syria, and that recent IDF attacks on Syrian soil have crossed red lines and threaten an unjustified escalation in the region.
Earlier in the week, Israel launched a major operation to destroy the Syrian military’s strategic military capabilities, including chemical weapons sites, missiles, air defenses, air force and navy targets, in a bid to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile elements.
In a move that has drawn some international condemnation, Israel also entered a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights just hours after the rebels, led by HTS, took Damascus. Israel has said it will not become involved in the conflict in Syria and that its seizure of the buffer zone established in 1974 was a defensive move and a temporary one until it can guarantee security along the frontier.
The rebel leader called on the international community to assume its responsibility to avoid an escalation and guarantee the respecting of Syrian sovereignty. Without directly mentioning Israel, he further spoke of “diplomatic solutions” as the only way to ensure security and stability and as a preferable option to “ill-considered military adventures.”...In his interview on Saturday, the new leader in Damascus appeared to indirectly respond to Israeli concerns and provide reassurance. Sharaa said that Syria is exhausted by years of civil war and that at this stage it will not be dragged into conflicts that may lead to further destruction, with reconstruction and stability the main priorities.
The rebel commander added that the Iranian entrenchment in Syria had posed a great danger to Syria itself, to neighboring countries and the Gulf, and said: “We were able to end the Iranian presence in Syria, but we are not enemies of the Iranian people.”
Over the course of a wide-ranging interview, Sharaa mentioned some of the issues that his new government will soon need to address in managing post-war Syria. He stressed the importance of abandoning the “revolutionary mentality” that propelled the rebels, and the need to establish modern institutions, guarantee the rule of law and respect the rights of all Syrians..."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/syrian-rebel-leader-israel-has-no-more-excuses-to-strike-we-dont-seek-conflict/
"Civilian death counts in the Gaza war have been inflated to portray Israel as deliberately targeting civilians, an independent group of researchers at the Henry Jackson Society found in a study published on Saturday.
The study, titled Questionable Counting: Analysing the death toll from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, found that leading global English-language news outlets failed to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties and relied on statistics from the Hamas-run Health Ministry when reporting on the war in Gaza.
Some of the key findings include men listed as women to inflate female fatalities, adults registered as children, disproportionate deaths of fighting-age men, the inclusion of natural deaths in reporting, and media underreporting of combatant deaths. According to the report, this failure contributes to a widespread narrative suggesting that Israel deliberatively targets civilians.
The research reveals that despite regular reporting on Gaza casualties, many English-language publications omit the number of combatant casualties, failing to include them in the overall casualty count.
When reporting on the Gaza death toll, the Hamas-run Health Ministry does not differentiate between combatant and civilian casualties.
Intelligence estimates indicate up to 30,000 Hamas combatants in Gaza, and Israel, which specifically tracks combatant casualties, has stated that over 17,000 Hamas combatants have been killed. Researchers examined eight influential English-language news outlets, including BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Associated Press, Reuters, and ABC. The research group examined articles mentioning Gaza casualties from February to May 2024.
The dataset comprised 1,378 articles. The analysis was conducted both collectively and individually by publication, with sample sizes ranging from 111 articles (ABC) to 246 articles (The Guardian). The maximum confidence interval for our estimated rates is ± 4%.
The study found that only 3% of publications cite Israeli data, and Hamas-provided data accounts for 98% of all sources. Few sources scrutinized Hamas figures and treated the terrorist group as an established provider of data..."
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-833441
