The majority of Israelis believe that their Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, should not be legally protected from criminal prosecution, according to a poll released on Tuesday.
Israel’s Walla news found that 56 percent of Israelis oppose legislation that would enable Netanyahu to receive immunity as he faces possible indictment in three separate corruption cases. 33 percent support his immunity while 11 percent said they had no opinion.
Netanyahu’s Likud party has denied reports that it is conditioning coalition talks upon to passing of such a law.
Read more at i24NEWS.
{Matzav.com}
 

Lawyers for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have asked the country’s Attorney General to postpone a pre-indictment hearing in three criminal corruption cases against the premier by at least a year, the Haaretz daily reported Tuesday.
Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit had previously said that the hearing must be held by July 10. But he is expected to agree to a hearing by the end of September, with the time allotted for a pre-indictment hearing in Netanyahu’s cases shorter than in past cases involving public figures.

Jason Greenblatt, the US Representative for International Negotiations, on Monday rejected reports claiming that the Trump administration’s peace plan for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) would only be economic in nature.
“To those falsely claiming our vision is just economic peace: we’ve been clear that the economic vision we present can’t exist without the political component, and the political component can’t succeed without the economic. Don’t believe rumors the plan is only economic. It’s not,” he wrote on Twitter.
Senior White House officials said on Sunday that the Trump administration is planning to release the economic component of its upcoming Middle East peace plan in late June, adding that it would break up the release of the much-anticipated plan.

New Zealand Police on Tuesday said the man accused of shooting dead 51 Muslim worshipers at two Christchurch mosques will be charged with terrorism, the first time in the nation’s history such a charge has been filed.
The charge marks the first time New Zealand has invoked such facet of the terror suppression legislation adopted in 2002 following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
In addition to the terror charge, Tarrant now faces 51 charges of murder and 40 of attempted murder over the March 15 attacks in the South Island city.
Read more at i24NEWS.
{Matzav.com}

Al Sharpton spoke at an event for Reform Jews and acknowledged how his “cheap” rhetoric stoked divisions with the Jewish community, publicly acknowledging his role for the incendiary rhetoric that helped fuel the deadly Crown Heights riots in 1991, which led to the death of Yankel Rosenbaum hy”d.
Without mentioning the Crown Heights riots specifically, Sharpton said he could have “done more to heal rather than harm.” And he said that all the public criticism he received paled next to the rebuke from Coretta Scott King, who was known for her closeness to the Jewish community. It appears to be the first time Sharpton has publicly shared the tale.

A delegation from ZAKA has flown down from Israel to participate in the search and identification of bodies in a mass grave identified in a building site over a former Jewish ghetto in the city of Brest on the Belarus border with Poland.
The grave was expected to yield above of 1,100 bodies, most of whom were shot in the head and many of them women and children.
“The sights are shocking to every Jewish heart,” ZAKA Executive Director Rabbi Tzvi Hasid said in a statement.
Read more at i24NEWS.
{Matzav.com}

 MK Rabbi Rafi Peretz, who is Chairman of Habayit Yehudi party, initiated a new policy for his party.

In order to strengthen themselves in the mitzvah of not speaking lashon hara, Peretz has instituted the limud of Chofetz Chayim which will take place at the beginning of every party meeting. The group will learn two rules of lashon hara every day before carrying on with official business.

Mi K’Amcha Yisroel

via Belaaz

{Matzav.com}

Israeli former spy Jonathan Pollard, who spent 30 years in jail in the United States, gave one of his first media interviews after his release almost four years ago.
Despite strict parole conditions prohibiting him from speaking to the press, Pollard is opened up to reporters, complaining that the Israeli leadership doesn’t care about him.
“If you don’t care about someone like myself, who spent 30 years in prison on behalf of the land and people of Israel, then how much concern can you actually show or exhibit or feel towards anybody in the country, from our soldiers to our civilians?” he says.
Read more at Times of Israel.

President Donald Trump on Monday lost an early round of his court fight with Democrats when a federal judge ruled that the president’s accounting firm must turn over his financial records to Congress as lawmakers seek to assert their oversight authority.
Trump called the 41-page ruling from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of Washington “crazy,” and he said he would appeal, adding: “We think it’s totally the wrong decision by obviously an Obama-appointed judge.
Lawyers for the president are fighting document and witness subpoenas on several fronts, and Mehta’s ruling came hours after former White House counsel Donald McGahn was directed not to appear before a congressional committee seeking testimony about his conversations with Trump.

Israel is the fastest rising opioid medication user in the developed world, according to a disturbing new OECD report.
According to the report, which was released on May 16 under the title, “Addressing Problematic Opiod Use in OECD Countries,” data from 2014–2016 put Israel in 11th place out of 37 OECD countries for opioid use, a 13 percent increase from 2013, when Israel ranked 24th. However, Israel leads the pack when it comes to the rate of increase in opioid use. From 2011–2013 to 2014–2016, Israel experienced a 125 percent increase.