Israeli Officials Try to Reassure Investors Following ‘Brexit’

Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon announced on Sunday that he has organized a 24-hour “situation room” to monitor the economic fallout from Friday’s “Brexit” vote for the UK to leave the EU. “There is no direct effect on Israel apart from the fact that we are part of the global economy,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said Sunday, in an attempt to calm Israeli stock indexes which all showed sharp drops in weekend trading.

Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky told the Jerusalem Post over the weekend that French Jews who are considering moving to Israel should do so as soon as possible, adding that he will press the Israeli government to assist them at the same levels as Jews who once fled the USSR. His comments came as the JA prepared to host thousands of Jewish leaders from around the world for its annual meeting in Paris and as polls were released showing large percentages of France’s Jewish community, especially young people, are seriously contemplating emigration.

The office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement on Saturday admitting that there was no basis for an accusation he’d made during a speech Thursday before the European Parliament that Israeli rabbis were urging their followers to poison water sources in Palestinian villages in the West Bank.

A growing dispute between Turkey and the Vatican erupted over the weekend when a Turkish official accused Pope Francis of having a “Crusader mentality” in response to a speech he gave in Armenia on Friday in which he referred to the Ottomon massacre of 1.5 million Armenians during WWI as a “genocide.” Turkey has long disputed the number of Armenians killed and has also long held that those Armenians who were killed did so during armed clashes with Ottoman troops and that many Moslem civilians were also killed in those clashes, a narrative most historians say lacks credibility.