In a rare move, the leader of Israel’s centrist Blue and White party, Benny Gantz, met formally with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi on Wednesday to discuss what have been described as major developments in the country’s security situation.
The IDF said the meeting took place place “in light of security challenges and regional developments.”
Sources close to Gantz, a former head of the IDF himself, said he officially requested the sit-down because he wanted “a direct update from the chief of staff on the latest developments in the area.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly approved the meeting.
Both Netanyahu and Kochavi have recently warned of a deterioration in the security situation due to heightened tensions between the US and Iran.

The number of hate crimes targeting Jews reported to police in England and Wales in 2018-19 has more than doubled compared to the previous year, interior ministry statistics show.
While the largest proportion of religious hate crime offences targeted Muslim people (3,530 offences), that number has remained steady over the last five years, according to the UK’s Home Office.
Whereas hate crimes against the Jews have more than doubled, representing some 18% of religious hate crime offences targeting Jewish people (1,326 offences) in 2018-19, compared with 672 in the previous year.
Read more at i24NEWS.
{Matzav.com}

The French court sentenced five Muslim women to lengthy prison sentences for attempting to blow up the Notre Dame cathedral.
The women, all converts to Islam, plotted to detonate a car bomb outside the cathedral in September 2016.
A Peugeot 607 was parked near Notre Dame in Paris. The car’s license plates had been removed and the lights were flashing. Police called to the scene found fuel tanks, diesel tanks and cigarette butts that were supposed to ignite the fuel tanks and cause the car to explode and damage the famous church.
According to French police investigators, “the attempted attack would have been successful if the women had chosen the right type of fuel.”

Iran’s economy is expected to shrink by 9.5 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said, down from a previous estimate of a six percent contraction, as the country feels the impact of tighter US sanctions.
The IMF forecasts, published on Tuesday in the fund’s World Economic Outlook report, are not far from estimates given last week by the World Bank, which said the Iranian economy by the end of the 2019/20 financial year would be 90 percent smaller than it was just two years ago.
Iran, a large oil producer, saw its oil revenues surge after a 2015 nuclear pact agreed with six major powers that ended a sanctions regime imposed three years earlier over its disputed nuclear program.

In late May, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney organized a meeting that stripped control of the country’s relationship with Ukraine from those who had the most expertise at the National Security Council and the State Department.
Instead, Mulvaney put an unlikely trio in charge of managing the U.S.-Ukraine account amid worrisome signs of a new priority, congressional officials said Tuesday: pressuring the fledgling government in Kiev to deliver material that would be politically valuable to President Donald Trump.

The steering committee that leads the weekly riots on the Israel-Gaza border is inaugurating a children’s park near a border area that has been a focal point for the often violent disturbances, Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on Sunday.
According to the report, the so-called “Park of Return” is already prepared for use and includes games, entertainment facilities, lawns, gardens, a promenade, shaded areas for picnics, and fountains.
The committee said, “The park is a message of our people’s life and continuity in the face of the occupation, that we are rooted in our land and cling to hope and life.”

Freedom Caucus members Rep. Mark Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan react on ‘Hannity.’
WATCH:

A controversy that began last summer, pitting community library-event planners in a New Jersey suburb and various Palestinian sympathizers against a Jewish community, is now moving into the legal arena.
The almost 20-year-old Central Jersey Jewish Public Affairs Committee (CJJPAC)—a pro-Israel advocacy organization headed by Dr. Marc Hanfling and Marc Kalton, in concert with Zachor Legal Institute, an anti-BDS legal think tank—is launching action against both the borough of Highland Park, N,J., and its library. The suit will center on the library’s planned book reading of P Is for Palestine, an alphabet book written for young children by Golbarg Bashi, a professor of Middle East Studies.

Israel will have to return two parcels of agricultural land in the Jordan Valley to Jordan after the Hashemite Kingdom refused to extend a lease on the lands outlined in the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty.
The transition will affect dozens of Israeli farmers who have been working the 247 acres of land for the past 25 years.
The two parcels of land, Naharayim in the Jordan Valley and Tzofar in the Arava, include the Island of Peace Park at the junction between the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers. They were returned to Jordan as part of the 1994 peace treaty, but leased by Israel under a special clause with the provision that Israel would have use of the land for 25 years and be able to renew as a matter of procedure.

People across the United States and around the world will join together virtually on the one-year anniversary of the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
The virtual commemoration, called “Pause with Pittsburgh,” is scheduled for 5 p.m. on October 27. The moment of solidarity and remembrance for the 11 people who were killed during the attack will include, for those in North America, a text including a video with the mourning prayer and a link to Pittsburgh’s local community public memorial service via livestream, and an opportunity to post on a community message board. Overseas participation is through email.
The program is a project of the Jewish Federations of North America.