Top Israeli rabbis, and U.S. envoy, pray for Trump recovery

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s top rabbis prayed for U.S. President Donald Trump to recover from COVID-19 on Monday, invoking his name in a Jewish holiday ceremony at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

Support for Trump, who recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. Embassy to the city, is strong among Israelis, who mark the Jewish high holidays this year while under a second coronavirus lockdown.

“May He who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David and Solomon send healing to Donald John, son of Fred,” intoned Shmuel Rabinovitch, rabbi of the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site.

“May the Holy Blessed One overflow with compassion for him, restore him, cure him, strengthen him, enliven him,” he said, reciting the traditional prayer for those in ill health, to amens from Israel’s two chief rabbis and U.S. ambassador David Friedman.

They were attending a ceremony, coinciding with the Sukkot festival, in which members of Judaism’s priestly caste bless the public in a chant at the Western Wall.

With Israel struggling against a surge in coronavirus cases, attendance was drastically pared down this year.

Heading to the event as an invited guest, Friedman tweeted that it was “normally attended by thousands, today just 20”.

“I will pray for God’s mercy and healing upon all those throughout the world afflicted with Covid-19,” he said.

(Writing by Dan Williams, Editing by William Maclean)

Abbas says some Israeli rabbis called for poisoning Palestinian water

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accuses rabbis of poisoning the water

By Robin Emmott and Dan Williams

BRUSSELS/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday accused Israeli rabbis of calling for the poisoning of Palestinian water, in what appeared to be an invocation of a widely debunked media report that recalled a medieval anti-Semitic libel.

Abbas’s remarks, in a speech to the European parliament, did not appear on the official transcript issued by his office, suggesting he may have spoken off the cuff as he condemned Israeli actions against Palestinians amid stalled peace talks.

“Only a week ago, a number of rabbis in Israel announced, and made a clear announcement, demanding that their government poison the water to kill the Palestinians,” Abbas said.

“Isn’t that clear incitement to commit mass killings against the Palestinian people?”

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to the remarks, which were made as Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, made a parallel visit to Brussels.

Rivlin’s office said Abbas had turned down a European proposal that the two meet there. A spokesman for Abbas said any such meeting would require more preparation.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.

Abbas, who received a standing ovation from EU lawmakers after his speech, gave no source for his information — and there has been no evidence over the past week of any call by Israeli rabbis to poison Palestinian water.

MASSACRES

Reports of an alleged rabbinical edict emerged on Sunday, when the Turkish state news agency Anadolu said that a “Rabbi Shlomo Mlma, chairman of the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank settlements”, had issued an advisory to allow Jewish settlers to take such action.

The same day, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, on its website, cited what it said was a water-poisoning call from a “Rabbi Mlmad” and demanded his arrest.

Reuters and other news outlets in Israel could not locate any rabbi named Shlomo Mlma or Mlmad, and there is no listed organization called the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank.

Gulf News, in a report on Sunday, said a number of rabbis had issued the purported advisory. It attributed the allegation to Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization of veteran soldiers critical of the military’s treatment of Palestinians.

A spokesman for Breaking the Silence told Reuters the group had not provided any such information.

For Jews, allegations of water poisoning strike a bitter chord. In the 14th century, as plague swept across Europe, false accusations that Jews were responsible for the disease by deliberately poisoning wells led to massacres of Jewish communities.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta; editing by Ralph Boulton)

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