The employment rate of Israelis aged 25 to 64 stands at a record 78.3 percent, while major wage gaps between population groups continue to exist, according to a report published on Wednesday by Israel’s Labor Ministry.
Israel’s employment rate is higher than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 73.7 percent, with the unemployment rate at a “healthy” 4 percent, the report said.
Nevertheless, there are still significant obstacles for Israel to overcome. Arab women and charedi men are the two population groups struggling to integrate into the Israeli workforce. Only 38.2 percent of Arab women and 50.2 percent of haredi men are employed, the report stated.

Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin filed a petition to an Israeli court this week seeking to block Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from visiting the country.
Omar has made several vocal anti-Semitic comments and recently introduced a pro-BDS resolution in the House. She has also accused American Jews of dual loyalty to Israel.
A 2017 Israeli law allows the state to block foreigners that promote BDS from entering the country. The motion seeks to force Interior Minister Aryeh Deri to bar Omar from entering.
However, it is unclear how effective the petition will be since Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer already said that Israel will not prevent Omar and fellow congresswoman, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who also supports BDS, from visiting later this month.

An Israeli-Arab ISIS fighter captured in Syria asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to personally intervene to get him back to Israel in an interview on the Saudi Arabian Al-Arabiya Network.
“I am an Israeli citizen. … You do not discriminate between Arabs, Jews and Druze. … I am having a very, very tough time in this prison. … I will return as a better [person],” said Sayyaf Sharif Daoud in Hebrew, according to the text of the interview published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
In the interview that ran on Wednesday, Daoud also raised the possibility that ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was “created” by the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency.

The Zehut Party submitted its slate for the Sept. 17 elections on Wednesday, ending speculation that the nationalist, quasi-libertarian party would merge with the United Right.
Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut had been in talks with the New Right Party, led by Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, but announced it would be running independently after it was publicized that New Right had joined with the Union of Right Wing Parties to form the United Right list.
Feiglin, who generated a lot of buzz as a candidate to watch prior to the April 9 election, said he would recommend “whoever is chosen to lead the national camp” as prime minister if his party passes the minimum vote threshold to enter the Knesset.

Like the first round of 2020 Democratic presidential debates last month in Miami, the new set that begun on Tuesday evening barely focused on American foreign policy. Nevertheless, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren made it a point to attack U.S. President Donald Trump on his policy regarding the Iranian nuclear threat.
Since Trump left the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018, alleged Warren: “The world gets closer and closer to nuclear war.”

President Donald Trump’s move to shield his New York state tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee got an early win Thursday as a federal judge accepted a state proposal not to hand over Trump’s returns while the court decides whether a lawsuit by the president should be heard by a judge in Washington or New York.
The action in Washington came after Trump sued as a private citizen to stop lawmakers from using a recently enacted New York law to obtain his state tax records.

President Trump heads to Cincinnati to rally crowds for his 2020 re-election campaign as the crowded Democratic field wraps its second round of primary debates.
WATCH:

Boeing Co plans further changes to the software architecture of the 737 MAX flight-control system to address a flaw discovered after a test in June, two people briefed on the matter said late on Thursday.
The redesign, first reported by the Seattle Times, involves using and receiving input from both flight control computers rather than one.
The move comes in response to an effort to address a problem discovered in June during a Federal Aviation Administration(FAA) simulator test which was done in response to two plane crashes over the past year.
Read more at REUTERS.
{Matzav.com}

Israel reportedly carried out an airstrike in southern Syria near the Golan Heights on Thursday, Syrian state television reported.
The report on state-owned Ikhbariyah said the attack targeted Tel al-Hara, where a Russian outpost was stationed, though has since been taken over by Iranian-backed militias, Reuters quoted Western intelligence sources as saying.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanahu, at a memorial ceremony for Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a revisionist Zionist leader, suggested that Israel was behind the strike.
“We’re defending ourselves at all times,” Netanyahu said.
Tel al-Hara overlooks the Golan Heights and had served as a Russian radar base until the Syrian army recaptured it last year from the rebels.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday pledged to allow the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada on his first day in office.
The statement from Sanders, who has long made lowering drug prices a top priority, shows his efforts to highlight how far he would go on the issue.
“There is no rational reason why insulin and other life-saving medications should cost ten times more in the United States than Canada,” Sanders said in a statement.
“On day one of my administration, I will direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services and FDA Commissioner to allow pharmacists, wholesalers and patients to purchase FDA approved prescription drugs from Canada,” he added.