Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem on Monday with visiting Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.
The Russian official was in the Jewish state to attend a tripartite summit on Tuesday with his American and Israeli counterparts, John Bolton and Meir Ben-Shabbat, on regional security issues.
“Israel will not allow Iran, which calls for our destruction, to entrench on our border; we will do everything to prevent it from attaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told Patrushev on Monday. “Self-defense is a very important lesson of 20th-century history, certainly for the Jewish people and its state.”

George Soros, heiresses to the Pritzker fortune, Abigail Disney and Facebook Inc. co-founder Chris Hughes are among those calling for a wealth tax to help address income inequality and provide funding for climate change and public health initiatives.
“We are writing to call on all candidates for President, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, to support a moderate wealth tax on the fortunes of the richest one-tenth of the richest 1% of Americans — on us,” according to a letter signed by 19 individuals — one anonymously — and posted online Monday. “The next dollar of new tax revenue should come from the most financially fortunate, not from middle-income and lower-income Americans.”

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations is defending shooting down a U.S. surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz and says Tehran will not be forced back into negotiations with the White House.
“You cannot negotiate with somebody who has a knife in his hand putting the knife under your throat,” Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in an exclusive interview with NPR. “That cannot be acceptable by anybody. Any reasonable person cannot accept to have negotiations with somebody who is threatening you.”
Ravanchi also accused American leaders of unleashing “economic warfare” against Iran in attempting to isolate the country and forcing it back to the negotiating table.

A New Jersey native who acted as a double agent for ISIS was being sentenced in Brooklyn on Monday for providing material support to the terror group — for the second time.
Sinmyah Amera Ceasar was arrested in 2016 and pleaded guilty a year later to providing material support to ISIS, officials said Monday morning during the sentencing. Ceasar signed a cooperation agreement with the federal government following the sentencing. But afterward, she secretly continued supporting the terror group, prosecutors said.
Ceasar — who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in March — was being sentenced as a Jane Doe in Brooklyn federal court on Monday.

Israel’s repeat election on Sept. 17 might not be a literal do-over of April 9, as two new parties may be entering the fray.
The first of these new parties belongs to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, who seems to be preparing for a Knesset run. Barak has confirmed reports to this effect, telling Israel’s Channel 12 news, “I would like to see if we can put a bloc together that can defeat [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
He explained that there must be a coming together of forces on the center-left “to prevent what happened in the last elections,” in which the Blue and White Party, with three former Israel Defense Forces chiefs of staff in its leadership, failed to topple Netanyahu.

The Jewish community in Strand, South Africa, filed a police complaint recently after four gravestones in the local Jewish cemetery were vandalized. Last week, two other Jewish cemeteries in the same district of Western Cape were also the target of vandalism. Police fear it may be the work of a neo-Nazi cell.
Deputy chairman of the World Zionist Organization, Yaakov Hagoel, responded on Sunday to the event, saying: “These incidents, unfortunately, spread like wildfire and have become a global trend, and these are very serious incidents that must be stopped immediately before they kill Jews. I appeal to governments around the world and to law enforcement authorities to not take it lightly, and to take a firm hand against any manifestation of anti-Semitism.”

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) rejected an invitation on Sunday to tour Auschwitz with a Holocaust survivor.
The organization From the Depths, whose president, 93-year-old Edward Mosberg, is a Holocaust survivor, invited her to see the camp, where an estimated 1.1. million people, almost all of them Jews, were killed.

The city of Petach Tikvah in central Israel will name a city square after US President Donald Trump, the municipality announced Monday.

‘Trump Square’ will be inaugurated in a special ceremony on the night of July 3. The ceremony will be held on in the presence of Mayor Rami Greenberg, representatives of the American Embassy and Knesset representatives.

Petach Tikvah Mayor Rami Greenberg said: “The State of Israel has not had a sympathetic and supportive president than US President Donald Trump. We appreciate and appreciate his support for the State of Israel and its residents and it is fitting that a central square in the fourth largest city in the State of Israel be named after him.”

{Matzav.com}

Judge Ruchie Freier made kiddush Hashem on a Lufthansa flight  recently when she was able to provide medical care to a passenger who had a medical emergency mid flight.
Freier, a frum woman from Boro Park who is also a medic that opened a female volunteer paramedic service called Ezras Nashim, received the above letter from the airline thanking her for her work aboard the plane.
Lufthansa also offered Freier a 150 pound voucher for their airline as a thank you for her service.
{Matzav.com}

Facebook failed to fend off a lawsuit over a data breach that affected nearly 30 million users, one of several privacy snafus that have put the company under siege.
The company’s disclosure in September that hackers exploited several software bugs to obtain login access to accounts was tagged as Facebook’s worst security breach ever. An initial estimate that as many as 50 million accounts were affected was scaled back weeks later.