Two dozen Spanish city councils are facing legal action for promoting “antisemitic discrimination” by endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, a Madrid-based group behind the lawsuits said this week.
ACOM said the city councils in questions have approved measures describing themselves a “Space Free of Israeli Apartheid,” in support of BDS. The declarations amount to discrimination “for reasons of race, religion, beliefs or national origin,” in violation of the Spanish constitution, according to the group.

 
As Israel turned 71 on Thursday, an ex-top defense official gave his assessment of the evolution of the country’s security doctrine.
Speaking with Israel’s Channel 13, a former head of the National Security Council, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, said, “On a strategic level, Israel has always been defensive, a policy according to which you live with the current situation and do not initiate a war to change it.”
This led Israel to adopt a policy of only fighting a “war of no choice.” That is, a war in which the very existence of the state was threatened by the enemy.
In the 1956 Sinai Campaign and the 1967 Six-Day War, Eiland noted, “we fired the first shot, but it was out of a sense of no choice, because of the actions of the other side.”

 
Law enforcement officers in Los Angeles seized more than 1,000 guns from a Bel Air mansion on Wednesday after receiving an anonymous tip.
The source alleged that an individual living in Holmby Hills, a ritzy Los Angeles neighborhood, was “illegally manufacturing and selling guns,” Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Mike Lopez said.
Early Wednesday, the LAPD and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives executed a search warrant at the North Beverly Glen Boulevard home and discovered the cache of guns. They arrested Girard Damien Saenz, 56, an LAPD spokesperson told The Washington Post on Wednesday
Aerial images show stacks of weapons including hundreds of rifles, pistols, ammunition and manufacturing equipment.

Forty six million of Australia’s new $50 notes have been printed with a typo, the Reserve Bank has confirmed.
The “new and improved” $50 banknote was rolled out in October last year, with a host of new technologies designed to improve accessibility and prevent counterfeiting. But the yellow note also contains a typo that misspells the word “responsibility”.
The note features the Indigenous writer and inventor David Unaipon on one side, and Edith Cowan, Australia’s first female member of parliament, on the other – as it has since 1995. The small error occurred on Cowan’s side, in the text of her speech.
“It is a great responsibilty [sic] to be the only woman here, and I want to emphasise the necessity which exists for other women being here,” it says.

President Trump said on Thursday he could not rule out a military confrontation with Iran given the heightened tensions between the two countries, Reuters reported.
The president also urged Iran’s leadership to sit down and talk with him about giving up Tehran’s nuclear program.
At an impromptu news conference at the White House, Trump declined to say what prompted him to deploy the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group to the region over what was described as unspecified threats.
“We have information that you don’t want to know about. They were very threatening and we have to have great security for this country and many other places,” he said, according to Reuters.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.

More than a year after the deadly Parkland, Florida, shooting, and after months of fierce debate, the state’s governor signed into law Wednesday a bill that allows teachers to carry guns at school.
The law expands the state’s “guardian” program, which was passed last year after the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead. The original guardian program allowed some school staffers to carry guns on campus. The expansion allows classroom teachers to be armed as well.
There are stipulations: School districts must approve the measure, teachers must volunteer for the program, and all participants are required to undergo a background check and psychiatric evaluation.

Morris Kahn, founder of SpaceIL, the Israeli space program behind the failed Beresheet spacecraft moon mission last month, said in an Independence Day address at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl on Wednesday that SpaceIL will attempt another moon landing within two years, this time with the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“On the evening of the landing where we couldn’t make it — we were two minutes form the end, but we didn’t make it — the Prime Minister approached me and asked how much would it cost to do another project,” said the South-Africa born Israeli entrepreneur in a speech marking Israel’s 71st Independence Day. “He asked how long it would take and I said two years.”

The leaders of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace stated this week that “a situation in which millions of Jews are being held hostage by terrorists is unacceptable.” The RCP is an organization of over 400 rabbis founded in 1993 by many of the most prominent rabbis in Israel.
While government officials claim that there is no solution to the situation in Gaza, the rabbis insist that there is.

A fire truck responding to a call in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Yerushalayim was attacked on Thursday, after local residents tried to tear down an Israeli flag.
The truck was responding to an emergency call when dozens of men attempted to rip the blue and white emblem, a spokesperson for the firefighters said.
Israeli fire trucks do not normally carry national insignia, but the flag was mounted on the vehicle for independence day – as many Israeli vehicles are.
“We managed to keep them away for a short time from the fire engine, but as we continued towards the fire, a number of residents lay down in front of the wheels, blocking our way, and at that time others climbed onto the fire truck and tore it off,” the team commander, Lt. Col. Avi Levy, said.

White House officials misspelled the name of the Red Sox in an announcement about the 2018 World Series championship team visiting Washington to meet with President Trump on Thursday, before declaring them the “World Cup Series” champions in a separate e-mail sent afterward.
On a page listing upcoming “Live” events to be streamed online from the White House, the announcement about the team’s arrival called the team the “Socks,” instead of Sox.
“President Trump Welcomes the 2018 World Series Champions The Boston Red Socks to the White House,” the statement read.
A second gaffe came in an official email to reporters:
“Remarks by President Trump Welcoming the 2018 World Cup Series Champions Boston Red Sox,” the e-mail’s subject line proclaimed.