Israel’s parliament on Thursday passed into law a controversial bill that defines the country as an exclusively Jewish state.

The “Jewish nation state” bill downgrades Arabic as an official language and says advancing Jewish settlement is a national interest. It also states that the “whole and united” Jerusalem is its capital, BBC reported.

Israeli Arab MPs condemned the legislation but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised it as a “defining moment”.

The bill, backed by the country’s right-wing government, says that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it”.

It was passed after a stormy session in the Knesset that lasted more than eight hours. Sixty-two MPs voted for the bill, with 55 against.

However some clauses were dropped following objections by Israel’s president and attorney-general, including a clause that would have enshrined in law the creation of Jewish-only communities.

Israeli Arabs make up about 20 per cent of the Israel’s population of about nine million people.

They have equal rights under the law, but have long complained of being treated as second class citizens and say they face discrimination and worse provision of services such as education, health and housing.

Arab MP Ahmed Tibi said the bill’s passing represented the “death of democracy”.

Adalah, an Arab rights NGO, said the law was an attempt to advance “ethnic superiority by promoting racist policies”.

Last week, Netanyahu defended the law, saying: “We will keep ensuring civil rights in Israel’s democracy but the majority also has rights and the majority decides.”

Eleven Afghan journalists and media workers have been killed in the first half of the year amid deteriorating security, an independent media safety group said on Wednesday.

“The first six months of 2018 was the bloodiest reporting period for journalists and the media community in Afghanistan. About 89 cases of violence and intimidation were reported, 11 of which involved the killing of journalists,” Afghan Journalists Safety Committee (AJSC) told Xinhua news agency.

A group of nine reporters was killed on April 30 in a suicide bombing while they were covering a terrorist attack at a diplomatic district. The attack was later claimed by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.

Two other journalists were shot dead in southern Kandahar and eastern Khost provinces in the same month.

The press safety group also expressed concern over the continuation and expansion of violence and threats to Afghan journalists posed by terrorist groups, particularly Taliban and IS affiliates.

“The intensity and scale of violence has been unprecedented during this period of 2018,” AJSC added.

Scores of displaced Syrians were turned away by the Israeli army as they attempted to approach the border fence along the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The group is among tens of thousands of Syrians who have arrived near the frontier over the past month following renewed fighting along the country’s southern Deraa and Quneitra provinces.

The incident on Tuesday happened in Quneitra, where the Syrian government is fighting to push out the last remaining pockets of rebels and fighters belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

The displaced Syrians stopped some 200 meters away from the fence before an Israeli soldier told them to leave.

“You are on the border of the State of Israel. Go back, we don’t want to hurt you,” the soldier shouted in Arabic through a loudspeaker at the crowd, Reuters TV footage showed.

The crowd, which included women and children, then walked back slowly towards the IDP encampment. Some stopped midway and waved white cloths in the direction of the Israeli frontier.
The Syrian regime, Russia accused of breaching ceasefire in Deraa
“Go back before something bad happens. If you want us to be able to help you, go back,” the Israeli army officer told the crowd “Get a move on.”

‘Extreme conditions’
Lama Fakih, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera both the Israeli and Jordanian governments have an obligation to not push back fleeing asylum seekers.

“The tens of thousands that have been displaced are fleeing extensive bombardment. They have left in many cases with literally the clothing on their backs,” Fakih said.

“They are living in areas where is intense heat without adequate shelter, without adequate humanitarian assistance, and despite the extreme humanitarian conditions and insecurity in the area, both the Israeli and the Jordanian government have persisted in not allowing these asylum seekers to try to seek refuge across the border.”

Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker reporting from the occupied Golan Heights said the hundred or so Syrians that gathered along the border on Tuesday had nowhere else to go.

And despite both Israel and Jordan providing some tents for some of the refugees, there are concerns about their living situation.

“What we understand is that they have gone back to the tents in the makeshift camps where they’re residing,” Dekker said, adding the displaced have to deal with the rising temperatures as well as sanitary and water issues.

“There is another concern that people who have been living under rebel control of years [which] is repercussion measures by the Syrian government,” said Dekker.

“There are activists in these areas, journalists, families who are simply afraid of what will happen to them when the government takes over the villages they’ve been living in.”

The UN estimates that 160,000 Syrians have been displaced because of recent unrest, triggered largely by the Syrian government and its Russian ally’s attempts to retake rebel-controlled territory along in the south.

Israel has given humanitarian aid to IDPs in encampments close to a 1974 Israeli-Syrian disengagement line on the Golan but has said they would not be allowed to cross into the Israeli-held territory.

A witness on the Syrian side of the frontier said people were seeking shelter wherever they could as the offensive drew closer to their location.

‘Inadequate, inhumane response’
According to Fakih, the displaced group includes journalists, humanitarian aid workers and other individuals who the Syrian government has targeted, detained and executed in the past

What is the effect of Syria regime’s recapture of Jordan crossing?
Fakih said Israel’s response to developments along the border falls short of what is required to alleviate the suffering of displaced Syrians.

“Quite simply it is inadequate and inhumane. These are individuals that are desperate for assistance. The response from the Israeli government has been to provide assistance across the border which has been inadequate. There are serious concerns for displaced populations that remain in Syria.”

Government forces backed by Russian air support have recovered large swaths of territory across southern Syria in the last three weeks, advancing unopposed by Assad’s western and regional foes into the strategically vital region near Jordan and Israel.

The campaign in the southwest is now expected to target rebel-held enclaves at the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel signaled it would not impede the offensive, even as it struck Syrian army posts near the frontier in retaliation for a drone incursion.

Aljazeera

President Donald Trump was forced into a rare admission of error after a political firestorm following his defense of Russia over claims of meddling in the 2016 US elections.

Republican and Democrat politicians in the United States, as well as intelligence officials, denounced Trump’s failure to challenge his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over alleged interference in the elections, calling his responses at a joint news conference in Finland as “shameful” and “disgraceful”.

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said he misspoke when he addressed reporters in Helsinki a day earlier, adding he accepts the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia did meddle in the elections won by him.

Trump faces bipartisan rebuke over ‘treasonous’ summit with Putin
“I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,'” Trump told reporters. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.'”

But Trump maintained that Russia’s action had no impact on the result, which saw him defeat Democrat rival Hillary Clinton, and denied his campaign had colluded in the effort.

In the Finnish capital on Monday, Trump refused to say he believed US intelligence agencies over Russia’s denials of meddling and delivered no condemnation of Moscow’s interference.

‘Fake news going crazy’
Trump also blasted the media for its coverage of his meeting with Putin and NATO officials last week.

“While I had a great meeting with NATO, raising vast amounts of money, I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia. Sadly, it is not being reported that way – the Fake News is going Crazy,” the president said on Twitter.

reporting from the White House, said Trump “was sticking to the script” in his comments – a rare occurrence.

“He was almost reading this [statement]; very much an example of a White House in damage control mode, where the communications team has worked very hard to parse the statement of the president in Helsinki and try to turn it into something other than what many people believe they witnessed – and that was a president standing apart from his intelligence agencies and the conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 US election,” said Halkett.

Trump criticised
The political firestorm over Trump’s performance at the Helsinki news conference engulfed the US administration and spread to his fellow Republicans, eclipsing most of the frequent controversies that have erupted during the president’s turbulent 18 months in office.

Taking direct issue with the president who appointed him, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said US spy agencies have been “clear” and “fact-based” in their assessment that Moscow interfered in the presidential race two years ago.

Trump-Putin summit brings an end to frosty US-Russia relations

John McCain, the senior Republican senator, said Trump’s seeming acceptance of Putin’s denial was a historical “low point” for the US presidency.

The language used by Democrats was much harsher, including accusations of “treason”.

“For the president of the US to side with President Putin against American law enforcement, American defense officials, and American intelligence agencies is thoughtless, dangerous, and weak,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said.

Democratic California Representative Jimmy Gomez charged: “To side with Putin over US intelligence is disgusting; to fail to defend the US is on the verge of treason.”

Some lawmakers said they would seek remedies against Russia in Congress.

Several senators from both parties backed tougher sanctions on Russia, but it was unclear if Republican congressional leaders would support such a move or what new sanctions might be crafted.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who called Russia’s government “menacing,” said he would consider additional sanctions on Russia and reiterated his support for US intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Last week, the US Department of Justice indicted 12 Russians for hacking Democratic Party computers.

Aljazeera