Likud blocks law to thwart Facebook fake news * PM threatens Iran as space launch fails * Divers in Danube for Jewish bones * Yiddish tour guide * S. Korea’s Talmud craze

[Visit timesofisrael.com for 24/7 updates]( The Daily Edition Tuesday, January 15, 2019 [Likud refuses to back rules to block online voter manipulation in elections]( By [Raoul Wootliff]( [PM’s party rejects declaration on fair Facebook use, tells Central Elections Committee it will continue to thwart transparency bill extending propaganda restrictions to internet]( [Nir Barkat registers for Likud primaries, officially entering national politics]( By [TOI staff]( [Lapid said to rule out union with Livni, vowing he ‘won’t unite with the left’]( By [TOI staff]( Live updates [Eisenkot: PM’s national security decisions were never political]( By [TOI staff]( [Outgoing IDF chief tells army’s top brass neither he nor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acted out of political considerations when it came to national defense]( [Aviv Kochavi takes reins from Gadi Eisenkot as IDF chief of staff]( By [Stuart Winer]( [Top officer sworn in at military headquarters in Tel Aviv before series of appearances in Jerusalem]( [Israel media review / Hi chief, bye chief: 6 things to know for January 15]( By [Joshua Davidovich]( [In parting remarks, outgoing army chief warns against politicizing IDF]( By [TOI staff]( [Defying US, Iran launches satellite, but it fails to reach orbit]( By [AP]( [Iranian telecommunications minister admits third stage of rocket malfunctioned, preventing Payam spacecraft from achieving necessary speed; second planned launch unclear]( [Israel inflating Iran’s presence in Syria to cover its own failures, Tehran says]( By [TOI staff]( [Visiting Lebanon, top US official says Hezbollah tunnels, rockets ‘unacceptable’]( By [AP]( Analysis [Raphael Ahren]( [Is Gantz a leftist? We still don’t know. His empathy for the Druze is mainstream]( [Likud has slammed ex-IDF chief and would-be PM for vowing to ‘fix’ Nation-State Law, but even Bennett acknowledged its problems, and Netanyahu set up a committee to deal with them]( [Likud ministers lash Gantz over Druze officer’s death in 2000]( By [Raoul Wootliff and TOI staff]( [Gantz and Lapid said discussing alliance, but neither wants to be number two]( By [TOI staff]( [Threatening more attacks, Netanyahu tells Iran to ‘get out’ of Syria]( By [TOI staff]( [Prime minister accuses Tehran of lying about advisers and lying about satellite launch, which he says is part of ICBM program]( [IDF chief finally acknowledges that Israel supplied weapons to Syrian rebels]( By [Judah Ari Gross]( [Turkey’s Erdogan okays Syria ‘security zone’ proposed by Trump]( By [AFP]( [Rashida Tlaib poses with Hezbollah-backing anti-Israel activist]( By [Eric Cortellessa]( [Abbas Hamideh, who heads a Palestinian ‘right of return’ group, posts photo of the two after reception and private dinner; Tlaib’s office doesn’t respond to request for comment]( [Trump signs into law genocide prevention act named for Elie Wiesel]( By [TOI staff and Agencies]( [GOP lawmaker Steve King loses committee posts over white supremacist remarks]( By [Matthew Daly and Laurie Kellman]( [Republican Palestinian-American is sole vote against anti-Semitism monitor]( By [Ron Kampeas]( [Prosecution to indict Israeli teen for Palestinian woman’s killing]( By [Jacob Magid]( [Court extends detention of suspect alleged to have hurled stone that struck Aisha Rabi; state to pursue manslaughter charge, official says]( Let's schmooze [Tour guide gets rare approval to lead groups in Yiddish]( By [Michael Bachner]( [After 6 years, Tourism Ministry finally certifies Yechiel Charaz to tell ultra-Orthodox tourists about Israel in his mother tongue]( [Revealed: Third Reich’s secret plan to divide S. America into 4 Nazi territories]( By [Rich Tenorio]( Top Ops [Shivi Greenfield]( [A looming ‘brexit’ for Jewish peoplehood]( [Will the Jewish Agency, the driving force behind Jewish unity, succumb to the same pressures pushing the EU to disband?]( [Rachel Wahba]( [The personal (Jew) is political (Zionist)]( [My father was blackballed in Egypt for being a Jew, and I’ve lost job opportunities in the US for being a Zionist]( [Ofer Kenig]( [The illusion of political stability under Netanyahu]( [Despite a solid decade with the same prime minister, other cabinet posts have switched hands at alarming rates]( [Diana Lipton]( [Not drowning but singing]( [The Bible’s poetic cheering of the Israelites’ escape and the Egyptian army’s demise reverberates across time and cultures]( Film premiere [Historical drama depicts untold story of the 1930s ‘Portuguese Dreyfus Affair’]( By [Rich Tenorio]( [Abbas in New York to take up chairmanship of major UN bloc]( By [Marcy Oster]( [PA president will address General Assembly and take leadership of the Group of 77, a bloc made up of 134 member states designed to leverage its members’ negotiating capacity]( [PA hands over Palestinian Jerusalem resident held for alleged role in murder]( By [Adam Rasgon]( [Abbas likely to visit Syria soon, senior Palestinian official says]( By [Adam Rasgon]( [In role reversal, Abbas pressures Hamas as Israel allows aid]( By [Agencies]( [Talmud-inspired learning craze sweeps South Korea]( By [Tim Alper]( More Headlines [Southern Poverty Law Center, prominent NY synagogue leave Women’s March]( By [Marcy Oster]( [Women’s March co-chair Mallory fails to condemn Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism]( By [Gabe Friedman]( [Tank said to have rolled across highway as crew dozed inside]( By [TOI staff]( [Israeli divers to search for Holocaust victims’ remains in the Danube]( By [TOI staff]( [Israel tech exits almost halve as startups seek higher valuations – report]( By [Shoshanna Solomon]( [Towns flood in north as forecasts see cold snap, snow in Jerusalem]( By [TOI staff]( [Israeli firm unearths gemstone with mineral mix previously only found in space]( By [TOI staff]( [Hardliner Smotrich wins race to lead influential Jewish Home sub-faction]( By [Jacob Magid]( [Strawberry genome jointly decoded by Israel’s NRGene, Japan’s Toyota]( By [Shoshanna Solomon]( [Palestinians, Israeli police scuffle on Temple Mount over a yarmulke]( By [AP and TOI staff]( [AG closes case against judge over Sara Netanyahu bribery case]( By [TOI staff]( [Gold, frankincense and... / Crystal meth found in Nativity figurines imported from Mexico]( By [TOI staff]( [Unsubscribe from this List]( © 2019 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL, All Rights Reserved