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http://honestreporting.com/idns-082516-palestinian-killed-while-stabbing-israeli-soldier/
Palestinian Killed While Stabbing Israeli Soldier
Israel Daily News Stream6 hours ago
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Today’s Top Stories
1.  A Palestinian was killed while stabbing an IDF soldier. As usual, Reuters and The New York Times claim that according to Palestinians, the attacks are due to frustration over lack of progress toward a peace process, but ignore the statements that Palestinian leaders communicate domestically: such as encouraging such stabbing to “defend” against unsubstantiated threats to the Al Aqsa mosque. Other studies have shown that common motivations for stabbings by young Palestinians relate to domestic violence at home, desires for revenge or  “suicide by soldier” as a response to domestic troubles.

2. Israel has already offered its assistance to Italy after it suffered a destructive earthquake yesterday, with the death toll rising to 247 so far. Meanwhile, some experts question whether Israel is itself ready for such a natural disaster.

3. High levels of Anti-Semitism have made Paris public schools essentially off-limits to Jewish children.

Israel and the Palestinians
• After a prolonged investigation, Israel has cleared several soldiers who were under investigation for certain attacks that took place in the Gaza war of 2014. The New York Times analysis focused on how mistakes by Israel may have caused avoidable civilian deaths but, predictably, the report placed no scrutiny on the role of Hamas.

• Hamas and Fatah, the two largest Palestinian political parties, are hotly competing on social media in order to win over voters ahead of upcoming local elections in Gaza.

• In the wake of strikes out of Gaza against Sderot and a strong Israeli response against Hamas targets the other day, the United States issues a travel warning against US citizens entering Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel calls off its alert for residents of southern Israel. There seems to be some confusion as to whether we are expecting an escalation of hostilities or not.

Mideast Matters
• Egyptian beach volleyball Olympian Doaa Elghobashywas was horrified that an Israeli holding a flag unexpectedly entered the background of her photograph. Says Elghobashywas,

I swear to God I didn’t know anything about the flag. There will never be peace between me and these people in my life. These people are dirty to a level that they didn’t let me see the flag.
It’s unclear exactly whether “these people are dirty” was a reference to Jews, Israelis, or just people who hold flags. Nor is it clear what she meant by “there will never be peace” given that Israel and Egypt have had a peace treaty since 1979.

In any event, it reminds me of a similar incident last year: when a Lebanese beauty queen was harshly criticized for having been photographed standing with her Israeli counterpart. The Lebanese contestant later said that the Israeli contestant had “photo-bombed” her, meaning that she had unexpectedly jumped into the photo at the last moment, without permission. All of this is in the context of an Olympics in which an Egyptian Judo contestant refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent, and a Lebanese team refused to share a bus with Israelis.

‘There will never be peace between me and these people in my life,’ says Doaa Elghobashy after Israeli-flag-clad woman invades selfie
Source: Israeli photobomb angers Egyptian Olympic volleyball player

Around the World
• Earlier this year, students at Kings College in London “protested” a presentation on campus by former Israeli Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon, by storming the stage and engaging in a physical altercation. This week, one of the students was found guilty of “assault and beating” and ordered to pay a fine of 100 pounds.

• According to U.S./Europe: Assad may have kept some chemical weapons. Will this affect international strategy in Syria?

Commentary/Analysis
• According to the Wall Street Journal’s Aaron David Miller, as US influence in the Middle East decreases, Iran is working to fill that vacuum with increased regional clout.

• Will Assad’s bombing of Kurds affect U.S. strategy in Syria?

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Los Angeles Times: A variety of letters to the editor on the role of Tikun Olam (healing the world) among American Jews
– Wall Street Journal: Bret Stephens examines the budding alliance between Iran, Russia and Turkey
– JCPA: King Abdullah of Jordan emphasizes that Jordan, and not Palestinians, is responsible for Arab interests in Jerusalem
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA Ed Yourdon via flickr with additions by HonestReporting

http://honestreporting.com/palestinian-weapons-network-uncovered/
Palestinian Weapons Network Uncovered
Israel Daily News Stream11 hours ago
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Today’s Top Stories
1. Turkish tanks cross Syrian border, apparently as part of a military operation backed by jets and US-led coalition warplanes to clear ISIS from the Syrian border town of Jarablus.

2. Israel uncovers an illegal Palestinian weapons making network: including 29 weapons factories, 49 weapons-making machines and more than 300 firearms.

3. As Israel and the US finalize the foreign aid package, Israeli MK Yair Lapid writes in Foreign Policy magazine that the most valuable aspect of the deal is not just the funds, but the important security cooperation. Lapid points out that Israel’s stability allows the US to pursue a robust foreign policy in the Middle East without putting “boots on the ground,” thus saving both American money and lives.

4. While criticizing Israel for detaining a Palestinian journalist, the Guardian vastly downplays that he also has ties to significant terrorism. The Guardian, it seems, would have its readers believe that Israel is improperly detaining journalists, rather than properly detaining terrorists.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Israel’s stronger than usual response to rocket-fire out of Gaza this week is apparently part of a new policy designed by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-General Gadi Eisnekot and approved by both PM Netanyahu and former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon. The idea is to prevent Hamas from using the time between wars as merely an opportunity to re-arm and repeat.

• A Bengal tiger was rescued from a Gaza zoo, described by the UK’s Mail Online as a “hellhole” and the “worst zoo in the world.” The tiger was apparently living among mummified remains of dead animals. Not surprisingly, before the end of the article The Mail managed to at least partly blame the suffering of Gaza’s zoo animals on Israel.

• Israeli Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman is working to open a dialogue with Palestinian academics and businesspeople, bypassing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas has traditionally solidified his position vis-à-vis the Western world by making the case that he is irreplaceable, because he is the only practical alternative to a takeover by Hamas. Apparently, Abbas sees Liberman’s plan as a threat to his continued rule, because it creates a situation in which Abbas would be potentially replaceable.

abbas-pal

Around the World
• Israeli PM Natenyahu phones Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Mideast peace. Few details were released, but it seems that through Russia and Egypt Israel is developing an alternative to the French initiative, which seems to be preferred by Palestinian leadership.

• According to recently declassified files from the British Foreign Office, Israel sold weapons to Argentina at the height of the Falklands War in, 1982. This has been more or less known since it was revealed in a book in 2011. Israel’s position:  deals with Argentina were essential to sustain its domestic arms industry – and Britain was also supplying munitions to Israel’s enemies in the Arab world.

• The United Nations has acquired goods and services from Israel totaling $91.8 million in 2015, double the amount it spent on Israeli products two years ago. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said, “Even the UN understands that Israel is the ‘Start-Up Nation’ and that Israeli goods and services of [the country] are of the highest quality in the world.”

Commentary/Analysis
• Prince Hassan of Jordan and Dr Ed Kessler, director of the Woolf Institute, teamed up on an op/ed, writing that Jews and Muslims must work together to stop the terrible slaughter of Middle East Christians at the hands of Islamic State. The authors point out that contrary to some current mythology, Christians are actually not interlopers in the Middle East, but rather have a long and meaningful history in the region.

• New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has denounced the BDS movement as being not “consistent with progressive values.” He added,

“There are plenty of people who support BDS who have advanced degrees and who call themselves progressives. I look forward to challenging them, because it’s ahistorical.”
The statement is significant, because de Blasio carries a great deal of credibility in progressive circles. Last June, the State of New York issued a decision that supporters of BDS may not have access to New York government contracts.  The state’s  Governor Andrew Cuomo explained, “If you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you.”

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– The Algemeiner: Russian TV Documentary Blames Jews for Titanic Sinking, Chernobyl Disaster, 9/11
– The Jewish Chronicle: Israeli scientists take step towards cure for advanced skin cancer
– The Council on Foreign Relations: The Problem With Vows to “Defeat” the Islamic State

Featured image: CC BY John Ragai via flickr with additions by HonestReporting

http://honestreporting.com/israel-responds-to-rocket-fire-from-gaza/
Israel Responds to Rocket-Fire from Gaza
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago
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Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel responds to rocket-fire from Gaza, targeting Hamas positions.

2. After this week’s bombing in Turkey, The New York Times examines use of children to carry out terror: including against Israel.

3. Israeli delegation in Cairo discusses Palestinian peace process with Egyptian President Sisi, as Russian President Putin offers to assist.

4. A Reuters report on yesterday’s Israeli response to rocket-fire from Gaza against Sderot is rife with fibs, fabrications and fraud.

08Aug22-rockets-reuters

 

Israel and the Palestinians
• Israel’s defense industry fears losing millions due to increase in US foreign aid.

• An overview of Israel’s Olympic performance: including 2 bronzes, 7 finals, a delegation with more than half women.

• In local elections, it seems Hamas will control most cities in the West Bank.

Mideast Matters
• Is the rebranded Nusra Front (formerly affiliated with Al Qaeda) uniting Syria’s rebels?

• The United States is moving its tactical nuclear weapons out of its base in Turkey. Does this signal a change in American confidence in the country’s stability?

• Turkey announces it will take a greater role in Syria by leveraging its warming ties with Russia and Iran.

Around the World
• Turkey accuses Europe of not accepting enough refugees from Syria.

• Possibly burnishing his foreign policy credentials for future political positions, George P. Bush makes unannounced visit to Israel.

Commentary/Analysis
• Is the government in the West Bank falling apart?

• Canadian academic study shows that religious zeal, and not loneliness or escapism, is what primarily motivates jihadists.


Featured image: CC BY Pedro Ribeiro Simones via flickr with additions by HonestReporting

http://honestreporting.com/sderot-turkey-wedding-bombings/
Sderot Hit by Rocket from Gaza
Israel Daily News Stream5 hours ago
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Today’s Top Stories
1. Rocket from Gaza explodes in Israeli town of Sderot, no casualties, IDF responds with strike on two Hamas terror bases.

2. After a bombing attack on a wedding killed 30 people in Turkey, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogen announced that Islamic State is likely behind the attack, adding that there is “no difference” between accused coup plotter Gulen, the Kurdish insurgent group PKK and Islamic State.

3. The AP reports that Egypt has arrested 70 Sudanese refugees on their way to Israel. This after having reportedly shot at least 10 Sudanese nationals several months ago. HonestReporting has criticized news outlets in the past for singling out Israel for criticism on African refugees, even though such refugees head for Israel as a prime destination, unlike many of Israel’s neighbors who treat captured refugees in a manner that is especially harsh and sometimes deadly.

4. The Observer features a story on British arms sales in the Middle East. Though the focus is not on Israel, it does mention Israel in passing, inferring that Tel Aviv is the place where Israel’s decision-making takes place. Honest mistake? Or a symptom of a deeper problem in news coverage about Israel? Either way, HonestReporting promptly obtained an appropriate correction.

HRsuccess

Israel and the Palestinians
• In a piece by Sophie McNeill, Australia’s ABC news network referred to Gaza as being part of the “occupied territories.” The network has since admitted its error and issued a correction. Yet despite Israel’s complete and highly publicized withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, this particular mistake remains all too common.

• In local Palestinian affairs, the Palestinian Maan News Agency reports that two members of the Palestinian security forces were killed on Thursday, and two more were injured during clashes with wanted Palestinians in Nablus.

• A Palestinian reality television show allows you to vote for – not your favorite singer – but your favorite political leader (as portrayed by competing actors). NPR points out, that this is, “…the closest Palestinians have gotten to choosing a leader in more than a decade.”  Mahmoud Abbas who heads the Palestinian Authority (which governs the West Bank) is in the eleventh year of his four year term, while the Hamas terror organization has ruled Gaza without a democratic process since its military takeover in 2007.

Around the World
• With the Turkish parliament’s ratification of a reconciliation deal with Israel, the Turkish deputy prime minister will soon be making a visit.

• Protesters from the campus based anti-Israel organization “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) disrupted a screening of the documentary about the Israeli army, “Beneath the Helmet,” at University of California, Irvine. This week, administrators determined that the disruption does indeed violate university policy. Among other measures, SJP will be required to train its members to, “better understand how to host constructive events and protests [that] add to the conversation, rather than detract.”

• The Council on Foreign Relations’ Elliot Abrams reports that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) passed a resolution at its triennial convention this past week that is not only highly critical of Israel, but also out of touch with much of factual reality. This is not to be confused with mainstream Evangelical Christians, who have typically expressed strong support for Israel as a Jewish state.

• Holocaust expert Yehuda Bauer says “British Jews are right to be worried,” citing, among other factors, troubling rhetoric by British political leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone. In particular, Bauer referred to Livingstone as a “violent anti-Semite.” Meanwhile almost 6,000 Labor supporters have been reported to the party’s National Executive Committee over accusations of abuse and anti-Semitism.

Commentary/Analysis
• In the New York Times, three Arab writers reflect on the the hopes and disappointments of the Arab Spring.

•  The Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, asks why, after the JCPOA (the “Iran Nuclear Deal”),  “…the Ayatollah thinks he won?” Solomon explores the continued power of hardliners in Iran, and failure of moderates to gain influence since the signing of the JCPOA.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– NPR: Natalie Portman’s “A Tale of Love and Darkness” based on the novel by Amos Oz.
– Jonathan Spyer, “Who Should Rule Syria?”
– INSS, “Not Just Sports: Mixed Sentiments in Egyptian Discourse about Israel.”

Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting, flickr/Shironeko Euro

http://honestreporting.com/idns-08182016-celtic-beersheva/
Israeli, Celtic Fans Scuffle at Match, Team Faces Sanctions
Israel Daily News Stream6 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. HaPoel Beer Sheva lost to Celtic 5-2 in the Champions League qualifying round last night, but things were ugly around Glasgow’s Celtic Park before the match. Israel HaYom reports that police had to escort Israelis to their seats after they were attacked by Celtic fans.

Celtic may face sanctions from the Union of European Football Associations; UEFA rules prohibit political expressions at games and fans were requested not to bring Palestinian flags, but the pitch might have resembled Ramallah’s Al-Bireh Stadium.


2. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is holding its general conference next month. It’s normally a venue for resolutions demanding oversight of Israel’s nuclear facilities, but a diplomatic cable seen by Haaretz suggests this year might be different.

Arab League members will apparently not raise the oversight issue, but Israeli officials are concerned about a different tactic:

Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission also fears that the Arab states will try to start a debate on the safety of Israel’s nuclear facilities — not on the production of weapons of mass destruction — during the conference, on the assumption that there is an international consensus on the issue of nuclear safety.
UPDATE: After this roundup was published, Haaretz subsequently reported that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to the story by barring its diplomats in Israel and abroad from having contacts with Israeli reporters.

3. Germany’s state-run broadcaster peddles anti-Israel water libel as news. Vijeta Uniyal fact-checked ARD’s report and found it woefully wanting.

A video report titled “Dry Faucets in West Bank” was broadcasted on Germany’s most watched news show. The video clip accused Israel of ‘rationing the water supply’ of the Palestinian and diverting water resources to the neighbouring ‘Israeli settlements’.
Related reading: “Water Apartheid” Was Really Just a Burst Pipe, But the Media Don’t Care

4. I think Simone Biles and Aly Raisman have to be blushing at Newsweek’s verbal gymnastics. Reporter Jack Moore says Hamas is a designated “extremist” group.

Israel and the Palestinians
• YNet takes a look at the complicated issue of Susya. It’s tangle of legalities, bureaucracy, and diplomacy.

The High Court of Justice ordered illegal structures in Susya to be demolished two years ago. The Court then requested the state’s position on the issue. However, due to international pressure, the state has yet to take a stance.
 
The village of Susya is a Bedouin village built without permits in the Israeli controlled Area C of the West Bank. The international community has been putting pressure on the Israeli leadership to not destroy the illegal structures for years, saying that it would make 300 people homeless, and endanger the two state solution. The European Union has built structures on the land for the Palestinians without obtaining building permits from the Israeli government.
• Israeli security forces seized weapons and thousands of shekels in a counter-terror sweep in the northern West Bank.

• British parliamentarians are getting trained in krav maga, a self defense system developed by the IDF, and UK papers are showing interest. Here’s what The Guardian, and Evening Standard, among others had to say.

Around the World
• This is one sick, anti-Semitic magazine cover from Venezuela’s Las Verdades de Miguel. The Times of Israel explains what you’re looking at:

The image emblazoned on the magazine’s cover featured a picture of an ultra-Orthodox Jew with a Star of David made of dollar bills, with the headline “The Rabbis of Cadivi” — referring to Venezuela’s government body which deals with currency exchange.
Las Verdades de Miguel

• A Florida state senator raised Jewish community ire for visiting the West Bank “as the guest of a group that backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.” The JTA explains:

Organizers of the protest against Dwight Bullard said they object to the groups and people he met while visiting the region in May under the aegis of a Miami-based civil rights group, Dream Defenders. His delegation met with a founder of the anti-Israel BDS movement and were led by a tour guide identified with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a State Department-designated terrorist group . . .
 
State legislators routinely travel to Israel and the West Bank under the aegis of pro-Israel groups, and some also go on trips hosted by pro-Palestinian groups, albeit ones that endorse a two-state solution and do not take a position on BDS.
• Egypt suspended eight news anchorwomen for being fat, telling them to lose their weight or or lose their jobs. While some Egyptian pundits were quoted by the New York Times praising the move, press-freedom activists say the move isn’t really about making the news more attractive. I’ll give Danielle Cahill-Gray last word on the matter.

Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– William Jacobson: Still searching for boycott of Turkish academia, finding only hypocrisy
– Dr. Haim Shine: Abbas’ channel has been closed for years
– Peter Wertheim and Ron Finkel: Mohammad Halabi and the international aid dilemma
– Khaled Abu Toameh: “No room for the Zionist entity in the region”
– Eitan Haber: Keeping your finger in the dyke and on the pulse
– Dr. Norman Bailey: Israel’s Kurdish conundrum
– Yaroslav Trofimov: Hezbollah’s Syria gambit strains local allegiances (click via Google News)

http://honestreporting.com/idns-08162016-italian-suspended/
Italian Journalist Suspended for Ties to Hezbollah
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel busted Hezbollah terror cells in the West Bank. Members in towns such as Kalkilya were recruited through Facebook by Hezbollah operatives working in Lebanon and Gaza.

ANSA2. Following up on Michela Moni — the Italian journalist who duped Israeli political leaders and soldiers into interviews which subsequently appeared on a Hezbollah TV station — YNet columnist Smadar Perry reports that Moni was suspended from his job at Italy’s ANSA News Agency.

I assume that expressions of contrition will not help Moni in his disciplinary hearing. He acted dishonestly. When he requested the interviews (with the aid of an Israeli official with ties to the media), he made two promises: The first was that the interviews would be shown on the BBC and Al-Jazeera. The second was that it would be broadcast on “international media” outlets. It just so happened that politicians, experts, and one IDF major general casually fell into the trap. Who would give up an opportunity to speak to the “international media,” after all?
 
This embarrassing episode is an important lesson in media. I assume the politicians’ spokespeople fell for this trick because Moni used the respected ANSA name. Had they made even a single phone call to the Rome-based news agency’s Jerusalem offices, this fiasco could have been prevented. Nothing would happen to a spokesperson if they insist on finding out whether this interview really was on the up and up (again, it could be done in as little as one phone call). And to be honest, professional spokespeople should have been suspicious when they heard about an alleged cooperation between Al-Jazeera and the BBC.
 
Palestinian TV producer Ahmad Barghouti – who solicited Moni’s services to get the interviews, paid , and started this whole mess – cannot be found. He’s not responding to cell phone calls and has disappeared.

3. In what is believed to be the first time, Russian bombers attacked Islamic State targets in Syria from bases in Iran. Reuters reports:

The move shows Russia is expanding its role and presence in the Middle East and comes amid Russian media reports Moscow has asked Iran and Iraq for permission to fire cruise missiles at Syrian targets across their territory from the Caspian Sea.
4. Guest Commentary: Does Israeli Media Need to Be Saved?  While there are valid concerns about the state of Israeli media, do we need to save it from being shredded by Israeli politicians? See this special guest post by Gavin Gross, a member of HonestReporting’s Israeli amutah (non-profit governing committee).

08Aug16-Gavin-isreal-media-saved-feature-770x400

Israel and the Palestinians
• Facebook closes down the account of Hamas leader Ismail Radwan in what looks like a Facebook clampdown campaign against incitement. The Jerusalem Post explains:

Just last week Facebook closed the accounts of Hamas leader Salah Bardawail and Islamic Jihad leader Khaled al-Batsh. Facebook also closed in July the accounts of the deputy chairman of the Hamas politburo Musa Abu Marzouk, Hamas leader Ezzat al-Rishq (who is Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal’s confidante), as well as a number of Hamas student leaders.
 
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassim responded to the account closures, telling Ma’an, a Palestinian news agency, that they amount to an Israeli terror operation against social media platforms.
• New mall for settlers and Palestinians opens in Gush Etzion

• This tweet from the Associated Press sums up the latest from Rio. ‘Nuff said.

Around the World
• AFP: Malaysia relinquished the right to host the 2017 FIFA Congress, rather than issue the necessary travel visas to Israeli delegates.

• Black church group in Missouri condemned Black Lives Matter’s statement on Israel. The JTA has the backstory on this notable statement published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Bret Stephens: Anti-Semitism and the meaning of an Olympic snub (via Google News)
– Michael Herzog: The world needs to work to prevent the next war in Gaza
– Amb. Alan Baker: Ten false assumptions regarding Israel
– Judith Bergman: Europe could learn a lot from Israel
– Nadav Eyal: We’re not interesting anymore
– Alan Dershowitz: Black Lives Matter must rescind anti-Israel declaration

Featured image: CC BY-NC Nicolas Alejandro with additions by HonestReporting;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-08102016-prisoner-swap/
Are Israel and Hamas Negotiating a Prisoner Swap?
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Congrats to judoka Yarden Gerbi, Israel’s first medal winner at the Rio Olympics. Israelis joyously lit up Twitter as Gerbi took a bronze medal and her place on the winner’s podium after defeating a Japanese opponent in the under-63 kg competition. Josh Feigenbaum gets tweet of the day.


2. According to a Hamas official, Israel and Hamas are negotiating a prisoner swap for the release of two Israeli civilians and the bodies of two IDF soldiers.

Avraham Mengistu, of Ethiopian descent, and Juma Ibrahim Abu Anima, a Bedouin — wandered into the Gaza Strip in separate incidents. The soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, were killed during the 2014 Gaza conflict.

3. Turns out Israel’s not the only country with concerns about terror groups infiltrating charity and humanitarian organizations. Australia and several South East Asian states have similar fears. The Australian picks up on a report raising the same red flags as Israel:

The report, to be released in Bali today, is the first regional ­assessment of the risks posed by terrorism funding. Written jointly by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines and Australia, it warns that “funding through misuse of not-for-profit organisations” to support terror activities poses a challenge for Australian authorities as well as for other countries in the region.
More on the story at the Sydney Morning Herald. Meanwhile, there’s more information about Waheed Borsh, the UN engineer who was helping Hamas. YNet writes:

Borsh’s interrogation also yielded further information that Hamas exploited UN aid for its own purposes. For example, when weapons caches or tunnel entrances were discovered in homes being restored by the UNDP, Hamas would take control of the job site and the materials discovered. This is in contradiction to UN policies which clearly dictate that weapons discovered are to be reported and destroyed.

Israel and the Palestinians
• A Gaza man who infiltrated Israel managed to evade capture for nearly a day, according to Israeli media reports.

The man was found by Border Police officers over six miles (10 kilometers) inside Israeli territory, hiding near some greenhouses outside the town of Netivot, Channel 2 news reported . . .
 
While it is not uncommon for residents of the Gaza Strip to attempt to sneak into Israel, the amount of time it took for security forces to locate the man is unusual.
• The battle for Jerusalem continues. The Palestinian Authority is considering establishing its own Jerusalem municipal council. Meanwhile, there’s a plan to boost the Israeli police presence in East Jerusalem’s neighborhoods.

• The Shin Bet intercepted a shipment of commando knives at the Kerem Shalom border crossing to Gaza hidden among packages of plumbing tools.

• Eight Palestinian operatives injured in Gaza tunnel collapse.

• Meet Ayoub Kara, Israel’s top Druze politician and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s point man on secret outreach to Arab states.

As Arab states crumble while others shudder in the face of Iranian boldness, Kara identifies a rare opportunity for Israel. Never before have the Arabs been in greater need of Israel’s edge, be it technological or military.
 
Kara shares Netanyahu’s belief that peace lies not in signed documents with neighboring states but in the combination of military deterrence and economic fortitude. Factories and employment in the Arab world guarantee Israel’s safety much better than a negotiation process that leads nowhere, he asserted.
MK Ayoub Kara

• Worth reading: The Christian Science Monitor takes a closer look at Gaza’s summer camps, especially those run by Hamas.

• Amid Hamas-Fatah feuding, Ramallah invalidates new degrees from top Gaza university.

• In what McClatchy News calls a “quick primer on the disputed land” journalist Teresa Welsh writes, “The state of Israel was created in 1948 on land that had previously been controlled by the British Mandate and was considered the nation of Palestine.”

Memo to McClatchy: In truth, “Palestine” was a region within the Roman Empire and later in the Ottoman Empire, but never a nation.

• Allon Lee has a few bones to pick with a recent Gaza dispatch by Australian ABC News reporter Sophie McNeill.

Around the World
• Canada pulls logo from World Social Forum in Montreal after MPs complained of anti-Semitic events. The lawmakers were especially disgusted by an anti-Semitic cartoon that appeared — and later removed — on the forum’s web site. And then there’s this:


• With the BDS movement suffering a series of defeats in Spain, the JTA examines why judges and politicians are standing up to the boycotters — for now (Ibiza notwithstanding).

Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Benny Avni: How your tax dollars are funding Hamas’ next terror war
– Nadav Shragai: The Temple Mount and a chronicle of violence and lies
– Aaron David Miller: Putin, Erdogan and shifting Mid-East alliances

Featured image: CC BY John Ragai with additions by HonestReporting; Kara via YouTube/arabTV

Lebanese Olympian Reprimanded Over Incident With Israelis
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel’s Interior Ministry is looking into deporting BDS activists and preventing others from entering the country. Israeli citizens too could face punitive measures.

2. The head of the Lebanese Olympic team was reprimanded by the IOC for refusing to let Israeli athletes board a bus they were supposed to share.

During the hearing on the matter, the IOC committee warned Salim al-Haj Nakoula the head of the Lebanese delegation, that they would not accept any further instances like this.
 
Al-Haj Nakoula responded that the whole incident was the result of a misunderstanding.
 
A source from the Lebanese Olympic committee told Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen on Saturday that the refusal to allow the Israeli delegation to ascend the bus on Friday was a group decision of the Lebanese Olympic delegation.

3. World Vision disputes Israeli accusations that one of its aid workers funneled money to Hamas. According to World Vision, the amount of money Mohammed Halabi is accused of transferring is much more than the US-based Christian humanitarian group even budgeted for its Gaza operations.

4. Stuff that Israel-Haters Say We get lots of comments. Most are supportive but some are so off the wall that, well . . . see for yourself!



Israel and the Palestinians
• Ahead of Tisha B’Av, tensions are on the rise between Israeli police and the Islamic Waqf, which oversees the daily administration of the Temple Mount. A number of waqf employees have been arrested over unauthorized renovations, and a recent attack on Israeli archaeologists. Haaretz coverage.

• A Saudi judoka forfeited a match, apparently to avoid competing against an Israeli.

The Saudi team tweeted that Joud Fahmy hurt her arm and leg during training and was unable to compete against Christianne Legentil of Mauritius in a first round match. But Israeli media reported Fahmy dropped out so as not to face Israeli judoka Gilli Cohen in the second round. Legentil went on to defeat Cohen.

• Worth reading: The Jerusalem Post discussed the upcoming October PA elections with Palestinian analyst Jihad Harb. He talked about why “technocrats” may be a misnomer, why Hamas and Fatah can afford to cancel voting, and more. This particular snippet caught my eye:

If Hamas wins some of the municipal elections, it will likely mean that international aid to the Hamas-backed municipalities will come to a halt. But I think that reveals a contradiction, in which the international community calls for elections and democracy, but simultaneously rejects certain people and movements.
• Israeli Arab journalist Furat Nassar made some history.


• Israeli-Arab arrested for supporting ISIS on Facebook.

Around the World
• Canadian Jews are raising alarm bells about the upcoming World Social Forum due to be held in Montreal. The European Jewish Press quoted Jewish leaders concerned about the “annual gathering of some of the most radical and extreme elements within the global left.” A Montreal Gazette op-ed by Reuben Poupko elaborates:

The organizing committee of the forum has vowed to implement four principled commitments concerning the way in which the conference will be held, one of which amounts to the systematic exclusion of pro-Israel voices and an expression of support for the widely discredited movement to boycott Israel, which even the president of the Palestinian Authority disavows. No fewer than 20 events are dedicated to the boycott and/or delegitimization of Israel, with some workshops openly calling for the end of the Jewish people’s inalienable right to national self-determination.
 
This conference should serve as an opportunity to advance legitimate issues and provide an atmosphere for meaningful and democratic dialogue. The thousands of people of good faith attending and planning activities at the forum should not have their otherwise noble agenda hijacked by anti-Israel extremists.
There’s also the matter of an anti-Semitic cartoon appearing on the WSF web site, later removed.


• Canada’s Green Party is in the news after a resolution supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel was passed at the party’s national convention. The Globe & Mail reports that the Greens were deeply divided on the move, with party leader Elizabeth May opposed to it. See CTV for Canadian Jewish reactions. More at the National Post.

• Spain naturalized 220 Jews under the terms of a right of return law for the descendants of Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition. According to the JTA, 4,300 Jews have received Spanish citizenship since the law was passed last year.

• UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is facing pressure to explain an undeclared donation of £10,000 (NIS 50,000) from Friends of Al-Aqsa, a pro-Hamas group.

Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Khaled Abu Toameh: The ‘anti-normalization’ campaign and Israel’s right to exist
– Lauren Sonnenberg: Want to fight racism? Renounce Israel. This is my campus reality
– Judith Bergman: Fighting BDS: No more Mr. Nice Guy
– Colin Rubinstein: Diverting humanitarian aid is despicable
– The Australian: World Vision: A serious betrayal of donors’ trust (staff-ed)
– Seth Frantzman: An artificial Gaza island is an impractical pipe dream

http://honestreporting.com/idns-08042016-world-vision/
Humanitarian Aid Director Funneled Money to Hamas
Israel Daily News Stream2 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel arrested the Gaza director of a humanitarian organization, accusing him of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. World Vision — a Christian aid group based in the Seattle area and operating in almost 100 countries — clearly has some ‘splaining to do.

A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Mohammed el-Halabi was a Hamas member from his youth and was sent to infiltrate World Vision in 2005. Haaretz explains what he did afterwards:

For its part, the Shin Bet contends that about 60 percent of the funds from World Vision’s Gaza operations were diverted to Hamas. Under Shin Bet interrogation, Halabi is said to have provided considerable information about the methods used to transfer the funds. He would allegedly invite a fictitious public bidding process in which the funds would actually be sent directly to Hamas. The Islamic group’s members would purportedly be recorded as farmers entitled to assistance and their children would allegedly be recorded as having disabilities so that they would also qualify for assistance.
 
Some of World Vision’s own funds were said to have been transferred to Hamas to building military positions and to finance tunnel digging, through the purchase of excavation equipment, iron, piping and building materials.

World Vision’s bad PR day was compounded by a separate New York Times dispatch suggesting some dodgy fundraising practices for West Bank families. At least one donor said he felt “misled.”

2. Oberlin College put anti-Semitic Professor Joy Karega on leave and will not be teaching at the Ohio institution this semester as the administration investigates a number of disturbing social media posts.

Karega attained notoriety over the last year when her anti-Jewish Facebook postings came to light. Among other assertions, Karega dubbed ISIS a “CIA and Mossad operation,” posted a video asserting that Israel perpetrated 9/11, claimed the Jewish state downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, said the Mossad perpetrated the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and shared an anti-Semitic meme of Jewish banker Jacob Rothschild that declared, “We own your news, the media, your oil, and your government.”
 
Oberlin’s move to suspend Karega from teaching marks the first concrete step taken by its administration towards addressing Karega’s bigotry.

3. Nazareth mayor claims Mahmoud Abbas interfered in Israel’s election:

Abbas called Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam on Election Day and urged him to push residents to vote for the Arab-dominated Joint List. The official sources said they have information that confirms this.
The PA denies the mayor’s claim.

Nazareth

Israel and the Palestinians
• Pandering for popular support ahead of October elections, Fatah brags (inaccurately) of killing 11,000 Israelis, sacrificing 170,000 martyrs and more.

• The West Bank town of Tulkarem has been without electricity since Monday because municipal officials and the PA are at loggerheads over who exactly is responsible for a NIS 208 million debt owed to the Israel Electric Corporation, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Some 400 Palestinians demonstrated against their government’s inaction and youths clashed with PA security forces.

• Sorry AFP, but people who commit mass murder in a Tel Aviv coffee shop are not assailants. Four Israelis were killed when cousins Mohammed and Khaled Mahamra walked into a Max Brenner cafe in the Sarona shopping market and opened fire on unsuspecting diners.

AFP

• AP: Israel was threatened in a video purportedly by Islamic State in Egypt.

• Meet Major Alaa Waheeb, an Israeli Arab who couldn’t be prouder to serve in the IDF:

“I believe that those who refuse to recognize Israel’s existence and call this land ‘Palestine’ are hypocritical,” he said. “I can understand the Druze of the Golan who reject Israeli citizenship and insist they are Syrian, but these people carry Israeli IDs and enjoy state benefits. They effectively recognize the Israeli regime. I can’t wrap my head around it.”
Around the World
• Anti-Semitic incidents rise 11 percent in UK this year.

In its report, the CST said the average monthly number of hate incidents directed at the Jewish community was now almost double that recorded in 2011-13.
OULC• The Jewish Chronicle obtained a copy of Baroness Janet Royall’s full report on anti-Semitism in the Oxford University Labour Club. The main takeaway, according to the Times of London: The party suppressed anti-Semitic incidents related to the club by only publishing Royall’s recommendations.

A party source said the full report had been omitted to protect names of vulnerable young people at university. Labour did not usually explain the decisions of the NEC, however, there are no names mentioned in the report, the source said.
• It took 44 years, but the Olympics finally commemorated the victims of the Munich massacre.

• Black Lives Matter platform says Israel an ‘apartheid state’ committing ‘genocide’

• Worth reading: Visiting Israel for the first time, Honore Gatera, the director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, talked to the Times of Israel about surviving the Hutu massacre of millions of Tutsis, the chills he gets from Iranian threats to annihilate Israel, and how incitement fueled the killings.

Gatera again fully concurred with the prime minister: Iranian leaders’ threats clearly constitute “incitement to genocide,” he said. While admitting not to fully understanding the roots of Israeli-Iranian enmity, he said the UN should request an explanation from Tehran. “Wiping someone off the map — that’s eradicating all the people from that country. And those speeches enter the minds of the young people as they grow up and may end up committing genocide.”

• Fathers of AMIA bombing victims added as plaintiffs in Nisman investigation into Iran coverup

Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Jeff Jacoby: Palestinian Olympians deserve better than Jibril Rajoub
– Aviva Klompas: Arafat is not a hero
– Asaf Romirowsky, Alexander Joffe: The anti-Israel movement’s ‘anti-normalization’ campaign
– Fred Maroun: Arabs must turn a new page with Israel
– Elyakim Haetzni: The Balfour judgment
– Brian Murphy: Why wealthy Qatar keeps the money flowing to Gaza
– A.J. Caschetta: Flaws in the ‘lone wolf’ analysis
– Emily Landau: The slippery logic of Iran deal supporters
– Mariam Lau: What Israel can teach Germany about living with terrorism (via Google News)

http://honestreporting.com/idns-08022016-abbas-iran/
Tehran Outraged As Abbas Meets With Iranian Opposition
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. Tehran blasted Mahmoud Abbas for meeting an Iranian opposition leader in Paris over the weekend, saying the PA leader “has been a collaborator with the Central Intelligence Agency for a long time.”

White House Logo 32. Looks like the US and Israel came up with a compromise on a key sticking point of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) governing the next 10 years of American military aid. Previous MOUs allowed for a portion of the aid to be spent in Israel, but the White House wants to end that. Reuters explains:

A key disagreement has been over Washington’s insistence on ending a special arrangement that has allowed Israel to spend 26.3 percent of its U.S. defense aid on its own military industries rather than on American products.
 
Israeli officials argue that the provision, which is given to no other country receiving U.S. military assistance, was needed to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” against sometimes hostile neighbors such as Iran, and that its removal would mean the loss of thousands of Israeli defense jobs.
 
But a congressional source briefed by the Obama administration said Israel had signaled its willingness to phase out the provision. The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said the White House was prepared to let Israel keep the arrangement for the first five years of the new MOU but it would be gradually phased out in the second five years, except for joint U.S.-Israeli military projects.
3. Hezbollah dupes top Israeli brass into TV interview.

4. HonestReporting’s “Red Lines: The Eight Categories of Media Bias” is a video series based on our latest E-book (available on Amazon for a small fee). In the fifth video of the series, Haviv Rettig Gur of the Times of Israel, and Michelle Chabin of USA Today and other papers discussed how important information is omitted from news stories and headlines.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli arrested a member of the Palestinian security services who was also a “major weapons dealer.” According to AP, weapons manufacturing equipment was confiscated in Monday’s Nablus raid. On Sunday, Israeli-Arab citizen was caught with six pipe bombs at a West Bank checkpoint.

• Egypt’s very unhappy with the burgeoning ties between Hamas and Islamic State in the Sinai. The Times of Israel explains:

This highly worrying development for the Egyptians began a few months ago, when prominent members of Hamas’s military wing crossed over from Gaza into Sinai to help IS set up its military infrastructure there. Several of them took their families with them, and were involved in training IS activists in the art of planting IEDs and firing missiles at tanks. Several even joined the IS-affiliated Sinai Province group . . .
 
Egyptian sources say that whenever Cairo brings up the issue with Hamas’s leadership, it receives the same evasive answer: the activists assisting IS are all former members of the Palestinian organization. But the dissembling doesn’t end there: Hamas military wing commanders in Rafah regularly host commanders of Sinai Province. One of the most prominent of these is Suleiman Al-Sawarka, whose Al-Sawarka tribe was among the founders of Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, which went on to pledge allegiance to IS and become Sinai Province.
• This photo caught Michael Horowitz‘s eye. MANPAD (which stands for man-portable air defense) is just a fancy acronym for what’s also known as shoulder-launched surface to air missiles. ‘Nuff said.

Michael Horowitz

Mideast Matters
• Troubling sign for Israeli-Turkish rapprochement, Part 1: Israelis are not only avoiding vacationing in Turkey, nobody even takes connecting flights there to other destinations, YNet reports.

• Troubling sign for Israeli-Turkish rapprochement, Part 2: Knesset committee recognizes Armenian genocide.

• Troubling sign for Israeli-Turkish rapprochement, Part 3: Will the recent coup attempt scare Israelis from investing in Turkey’s energy industry, which is counting on a pipeline to transfer Israeli natural gas through Turkey to Europe?

• Can you imagine all the nastygrams this generated?

The Lebanese mishap is deja vu all over again. In 2013, billboards honoring Russian soldiers in the city of Orel inexplicably featured an Israeli soldier flashing a thumbs up from a Merkava III tank. Russian bloggers easily traced the original photo to the IDF’s flickr stream.

Around the World
• Students on both sides of the Israel-Palestinian campus battles talked to the Jerusalem Post about the escalating rhetoric and more.

• Ouch. An appeal by Muslim personalities failed to mention Jewish victims of terror attacks in France. French Jewish leaders asked the authors of the petition to make necessary clarifications.

• Meet Siavosh Derakhti, a young Swedish Muslim single handedly fighting anti-Semitism.

• Israeli float at Stockholm‘s gay pride parade omits the word ‘Israel.’ What gives?

RT• Propaganda works. The Times of London picked up on the first controlled experiment on the effects of watching the Kremlin-backed television station, RT. Monica Richter of Oxford University involved more than 1,000 English-speaking people. The key takeaway? Don’t rely on only one news service:

Those exposed only to RT’s message became significantly more hostile to the western viewpoint — but the effect decreased when people were also shown BBC coverage . . .
 
The research comes as funding grows for the BBC World Service to boost audiences in countries including Russia. The money was assigned as part of last year’s strategic defence review.
 
On Capitol Hill, there is pressure for the government-owned Voice of America to be better aligned to US policy.
 
Anne Applebaum, director of the transitions forum at the Legatum Institute think tank based in London, said: “When people are exposed to more than one point of view they make better choices. But people nowadays can live in echo chambers where they hear only false information. They then become very easy to manipulate.”
• A few sporting developments caught my eye . . .

– After retirement, NBA star Amar’e Stoudemire to play in Israel
– Alon Day poised to make NASCAR history as first Israeli driver
– Israel’s largest-ever Olympic delegation is ready for Rio

Commentary/Analysis
Flag-Pins-Palestine-Israel• Worth reading: Australian columnist Nick Cater destroys BDS and the Palestinian movement against normalizing ties with Israel.

The disputed Palestinian territories should serve as an object lesson to Western victim-mongers; the politics of grievance achieves little apart from increasing stocks of righteous indignation. The suffering of those they pretend to protect is prolonged; oppression, real or imagined, becomes a lifetime sentence handed down at birth.
 
Four million Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza are condemned to a grotesque Groundhog Day. If Israel tries to help them, for example by supplying water, electricity or medical assistance, the move is condemned as a Zionist plot. To the anti-normalisation movement any improvement in the lives of the “oppressed subjects” is anathema. Why? Because it would destroy the argument that everything bad is the fault of the “occupation”. The huge gap in income — gross domestic product per capita is $36,000 in Israel compared with $1600 in the Palestinian territories — is evidence of what they call apartheid and they want to keep it that way.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Khaled Abu Toameh: A guide to the Palestinian lexicon
– Benny Avni: Why Palestinians are on the verge of civil war
– Avi Issacharoff: Its pockets lined with Qatari-paid wages, Hamas is on the rise
– Zalman Shoval: Abbas and the strategy of falsehood
– Yossi Melman: Is Israel’s success against terror a model for the US Army against ISIS?
– David Collier: Facebook: A pipeline for funding Hamas terror?
– Dr. Reuven Berko: Reality dawns on Nasrallah
– Smadar Perry: Nasrallah’s voice, Iran’s words
– Stephen Pollard: Anti-Semitic hatred a daily part of life online – and no-one does anything to stop it
– MP Bob Blackman: It does no good to expect the best from Iran

Featured image: CC0 Thong Vo via Unsplash with additions by HonestReporting; crossed flags via crossed-flag-pins.com;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07312016-french-funding/
Israel Probing French Funding of Anti-Israel Groups
Israel Daily News Stream6 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. In what the Associated Press describes as a move of financial desperation, Hamas is distributing plots of land to its 40,000 civil servants in lieu of millions of dollars in salaries owed. Most of the land comes from what was once the Gush Katif settlement bloc in the southern part of the Strip. Hamas still hopes for help from sugar daddies in Qatar and Turkey:

Senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil said the land giveaway is a temporary fix, “not yet a strategic one” that would solve the group’s financial problems for good.
2. Prime Minister Netanyahu accused France of funding anti-Israel groups. This came after French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he was considering banning foreign funding for mosques in France.

A preliminary inquiry has revealed that several European countries, including France, directly support organizations that engage in anti-Israel incitement, call to boycott the country and do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, Netanyahu said.
 
“We will discuss this with them because terror is terror everywhere and incitement is incitement which, apparently, encompasses the world, [and] governments must be as united as possible in dealing with them,” the prime minister said.
 
Netanyahu said the findings of the completed investigation would be submitted to the French government.

France

3. Golan Druze leader disputes UN statement on ‘hardship of Israeli occupation.’ Mayor Dulan abu-Saleh, of Majdal Shams, the largest Druze town in the Golan, said:

“I don’t understand what they’re talking about, it’s laughable,” abu-Saleh said. Druze in the Golan “don’t serve in the IDF and so far are only receiving from the state.” Referencing the war in Syria, he said: “Why don’t they condemn the horrors in Syria, where dozens of children are killed daily? Golan residents have a good life.”

Israel and the Palestinians
• At a West Bank checkpoint near Nablus, a Palestinian stopped for acting suspiciously tried to stab Israeli security personnel this afternoon. Israeli security forces arrested a Palestinian man after finding ammunition, axes and knives in his car at a checkpoint on Saturday night.

• Israel and the US are close to wrapping up a memorandum of understanding that will govern the next 10 years of US military aid to Israel. The Washington Post updates the latest developments as Brig. Gen. Yaakov Nagel, the acting head of Israel’s National Security Council, heads to Washington.

martyrdom poster
A Palestinian martyrdom poster

• The Times of Israel met with Dr. Mahmoud Habbash, the supreme sharia judge in the Palestinian Authority and Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs to answer the question, What exactly is a martyr?

The judge defined a martyr, or shahid in Arabic, as “anybody who has been killed in a war against non-Muslims.” He also said Palestinians are in an open “state of war” with the “Israeli occupation.” In the context of this state of war, he argued, any Palestinian killed as a result of it — whether directly or indirectly, whether an Israeli fundamentalist firebombed his home, or whether he attacked a soldier or a civilian, and yes, even if he was killed while stabbing to death a teenage Israeli girl in her bedroom as was the case of the murderer of 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel last month — is a “victim” of the conflict because his actions were a product of it. And therefore, said Habbash, he is a shahid . . .
 
The Islamic tradition of martyrdom is mainly taken from the Hadith, a massive collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad or his close companions. Each martyrdom-related Hadith expands on the concept. As this reporter has learned through many months of asking Palestinians what they think a martyr is, this much is clear: the concept of martyrdom is like a ball of yarn — the more you pull at it, the more it unravels. Habbash’s explanation of martyrdom as applicable to one who falls fighting non-Muslims is hardly the last word on the subject. For example, during the infighting between Hamas and Fatah in 2006-2007, each referred to only its own dead as martyrs. Even at Habbash’s level of scholarship, the concept demands fluidity.
So if I understand this correctly, Mahmoud Abbas’ top religious adviser says that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed a religious conflict.

• In a moment of candor, a Palestinian official confirmed that the PA refuses — for purely political reasons — to meet with Israelis to coordinate water usage in the West Bank, despite an agreed-upon mechanism in the Oslo accords. Here’s what the PA’s Fadi Abdel Ghani told National Public Radio‘s Daniel Estrin:

ESTRIN: And that’s where you get into politics. Fadi Abdel Ghani of the Palestinian Water Authority says the Palestinians refuse to participate in the committee because the Israeli members will only approve water improvements for Palestinians if the Palestinians approve projects for Jewish settlements. Palestinians oppose Jewish settlements because they’re built in occupied territory they want for their own state.
 
FADI ABDEL GHANI: In the end, no one of us can sign such documents for them. If you want to give me water, I have to approve projects for the settlements? No.
 

Palestinian children from the West Bank village of Fasayel, Jordan valley, play by a water tank in the village. May 14, 2015. Photo by Miriam Alster/FLASH90
Palestinian children from the West Bank village of Fasayel, Jordan valley, play by a water tank in the village. May 14, 2015. Photo by Miriam Alster/FLASH90

 

• Palestinians are protesting a Red Cross decision to cut back a program arranging family visits for prisoners. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Red Cross is scaling back visits because of what its statement called “a clear decrease” in the number of Palestinians visiting jailed family members, “resulting in buses chronically under-capacity.” But Palestinians said this was because of Israeli roadblocks, village closures, and revoked permits.

• The conscience of Zion, Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken, declared Israel an evil state.


• The New York Times introduces us to Talleen Abu Hanna, a Christian Arab who is also Israel’s first transgender beauty queen. She’ll be representing Israel at an upcoming international transgender beauty pageant in Barcelona in September.

The last time reporter Diaa Hadid wrote about the Israeli-Arab LGBT scene, she ran into trouble when A) four of the people she interviewed said their quotes had been misrepresented, and B) then-public editor Margaret Sullivan rapped the report for lacking context.

“I’m Arab. I’m Christian. I’m Israeli. All that is tied together,” Ms. Abu Hanna said. “And I’m going to win.”
• R&R is a big thing in Gaza these days, to the extent that “state-of-the-art health clubs” and “several posh beachfront hotels and restaurants” caught someone’s eye for a Reuters photo essay.

I don’t envy people living in Gaza, but photos of crowded beaches, pool halls, gyms, and people leisurely smoking from a hookah don’t jive with the spin that Gaza is the world’s largest outdoor concentration camp.


Around the World
• As widely expected, Syria’s “Nusra Front” severed ties with Al Qaeda, renaming itself “Jabhat Fatah al-Sham” (Front for the Conquest of the Levant). The move opens up possibilities for A) its participation in political negotiations over Syria’s future, B) joining the more “legitimate groups” fighting ISIS, and C) getting money from Saudi Arabia or Qatar.

• According to Haaretz, an Iranian general visiting the Syrian-Israeli border reportedly survived an assassination attempt by Israel or Syrian rebels.

• A teacher at a prestigious Parisian school is under investigation for sharing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with her students on Facebook.

• A Stamford, Conn. man was indicted for making anti-Semitic threats online. FBI agents searching Kendall Sullivan’s home “seized more than two dozen firearms, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and additional firearm components.”

• A number of Peruvians who converted to Shiite Islam under Iranian auspices are trying to start a new political party called “Hezbollah Branch in Peru.” More at Asharq al-Awsat.

Peruvian media outlets lately spoke about the danger of the presence of groups similar to the so-called Hezbollah on the Peruvian territories, for carrying terrorist ideologies and suspected activities that Iran might use to spread the Shi’ite sect and extend the ideology of the Iranian Revolution.
Peru

Commentary/Analysis
• Are IDF investigations sufficiently independent from the chain of command, and what does this mean for efforts to drag Israel before the International Criminal Court? Lawfare‘s Peter Margulies takes a closer look.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Nadav Shragai: ‘What if the third Lebanon war breaks out tomorrow?’
– Ardie Geldman: The invisible industry of deceit
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Don’t forget the calm in Gaza
– Yossi Melman: Why Nasrallah fears strengthening Israeli-Saudi ties?
– Elliott Abrams: The new State Department assault on Israel
– Letty Cottin Pogrebin: Bill Clinton would be an ideal Middle East envoy
– Ben Macintyre: Our Middle East carve-up is no cause for shame
– Bakir Lashkari: Building friendship between Kurdistan and Israel
– Mohammad Alkassim: What’s really behind the Nusra Front’s split from Al-Qaida?

Featured image: Photo by Ryan McGuire via Gratisography with additions by HonestReporting; France CC BY-SA Joshua Veitch-Michaelis; martyrdom poster CC BY-NC-SA delayed gratification;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07282016-hamas-elections/
Could Hamas Win Municipal Elections?
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago
IDNS-ipad-lap-770x400
Today’s Top Stories
1. Could Hamas win West Bank municipal elections this October? Analysts explained to the Times of Israel why they expect Hamas to succeed — unless Fatah cancels the vote.

Turkey2. BDS, if you’re listening, here’s a by the numbers look at Turkey’s press crackdown based on the Poynter Institute‘s roundup and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Or is it only an outrage if Israel does this?

46: arrest warrants issued for journalists
16: TV stations shut down
23: radio stations shut down
15: magazines shut down
45: newspapers shut down
29: publishing and distribution channels shut down

3. Work on the Israeli-Jordanian border fence is already underway, reports Globes.

The current segment from Eilat to the Samar sand dunes north of Timna is 30 kilometers long. The Ministry of Defense has built 24 kilometers of the fence so far, and is preparing to complete it in the coming weeks.
4. Terrorists Are NOT Victims: Turning terrorists into victims, and victims into attackers, emboldens would-be terrorists everywhere.

5. Fighting Media Bias: Dispatches From the Front: HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams was the special guest on MySababa’s Ask Me Anything. Find out what he had to say during his live online chat…

Israel and the Palestinians
• The JTA examines five reasons why Israel is succeeding against lone wolf terror attacks.

• The Associated Press profiled Dani Dayan, who begins his new job as Israeli consul-general in New York next week. He was originally tapped to be ambassador to Brazil, but Brasilia rejected the appointment because of Dayan’s background as chairman of the Yesha Council, a committee representing Israeli settlements.

• Britain’s ITV News visited a Hamas summer camp.


• CNN’s Christiane Amanpour discussed the prospects of peace with former prime minister Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman, David Keyes.
• Could headlines like this undermine Palestinian confidence in the French peace initiative?
EJPress
Around the World
• A British internet troll is facing prison time for making violent anti-Semitic threats to Labour MP Luciana Berger. The Guardian notes that John Nimmo was previously jailed in 2014 for sending threatening messages on Twitter to another MP and a feminist campaigner.

• As joblessness, inequality and violence rise in South Africa, the Jewish community is grappling with the question of whether to stay or leave. What does the future hold? The Times of Israel takes a closer look.

Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Jonathan Tobin: Why Israel may seal US aid deal now
– Prof. Efraim Inbar: Implications of US disengagement from the Middle East
– Daniel Serwer: The right target for the US in Syria: Hezbollah
– Aron Shapiro: Settlement ‘expansion’ fails to even match natural growth

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07252016-organ-harvest/
University Curriculum Claims Israel Harvests Palestinian Organs
Israel Daily News Stream2 hours ago
IDNS-lightstream-city-newsOverlay-770x400
53
Today’s Top Stories
1. The Palestinians are pushing for UN Security Council action over advancing Israeli plans to build 770 homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. The plans aren’t newThe project got initial approval in 2012 but was put on hold for political and bureaucratic reasons.

Germany2. Yikes! A German university course curriculum claims Israel harvests Palestinian organs and more.

Seidler told the JAZ that material showed “a picture of a genocide on the Palestinians, an ethnic cleansing, as well as a complete disenfranchisement of Palestinians by Israel.”
 
The seminar syllabus also covered the “victims of torture in Israeli prisons,” said Seidler. The seminar conveyed “anti-Semitic stereotypes,” JAZ wrote.
I wonder if Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom‘s teaching this.

3. Turns out Germany has been donating millions of euros to BDS groups, despite Berlin’s denials. Israel HaYom picked up on this NGO-Monitor report.

. . . between 2012 and 2015, Germany funneled at least 4 million euros ($4.4 million) to some 15 Israeli organizations , and 42% of donations went to groups supporting an international boycott against Israel and policies negating Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

4. South African Diplomat Supports Terror and BDS Against Israel: Former South African diplomat Ismail Coovadia launches a vicious attack on Israel in the Pretoria News, including support for terrorism and BDS.

5. Newsweek Singles Out Israel on African Refugees: Singling out Israel, and only Israel, reporter Jack Moore twists facts about African migrants.

6. Slideshare: Why You Should Still Care About Iran: In recent days, the Iranians destroyed 100,000 satellite dishes, detained a visiting American-Iranian, and conducted its fourth ballistic missile test since signing last year’s nuclear accord. If you haven’t seen our slideshare, here’s why you should care about human rights in Iran.


Why You Should Care About Iran de HonestReporting
 

Israel and the Mideast
• Haaretz updates the latest on Israeli-US negotiations for a new memorandum of understanding governing the terms of the next decade of military assistance. The overall amount of aid will rise, but Israel will no longer have the flexibility to spend a quarter of the money on Israeli defense contractors.


• Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades visited Israel to discuss “concerns over the Israeli reconciliation agreement with Turkey,” as well as plans for a gas pipeline. More at YNet.

• The Israeli government is debating a new policy on prisoner swaps.

The panel suggested the Defense Ministry have exclusive authority over negotiations involving prisoner exchange deals, and oversee official updates to captive of missing soldiers’ families. Any deal would still be subject to government approval, the committee’s report said.
• Frida Ghitis has a bone to pick with CNN.


I have a similar gripe with the New York Times and AP.

– Thomas Sutherland, Lebanon Hostage Who Was Freed After 6 Years, Dies at 85
– Ex-Lebanon hostage Thomas Sutherland dies in Colorado

Commentary/Analysis
• Tweet of the day from Shahar Azani:


• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Klaus Wivel: We are all Israelis
– Yleem D.S. Poblete: Israel deserves better security assistance
– Farhad Rezaei: How Israelis and Saudis are bracing for Iran deal’s collapse

 

Featured image: CC BY Adam Baker via flickr and David, Bergin, Emmett, and Elliott with additions by HonestReporting; flag CC BY-NC Jay Plemon;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07242016-israel-olympics/
Jihadists Urged to Attack Israeli Athletes, Spectators in Rio
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. The Foreign Desk reports that pro-Al Qaeda jihadis are being urged on social media forums to attack athletes and spectators at the upcoming Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro — especially Israelis.
“Your chance to take part in the global Jihad is here! Your chance to be a martyr is here!” the jihadis said, citing the easy process of obtaining visas for travel to Brazil as well as the wide availability of guns in “crime-ridden slums.”
By the way, Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev announced she’ll be boycotting skipping the opening ceremony because it conflicts with the Jewish Sabbath.
Israel-Rio2016-medium
2. I don’t know anything about the individual candidates, but Egypt and Qatar are competing for UNESCO leadership with their nominees.
While it’s hard to be enthusiastic about either country running the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, on the bright side, the outgoing chief and rare voice of common sense, Irina Bokova, is being considered as the next UN Secretary General.
3. Dore Gold, the Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and essentially Benjamin Netanyahu’s top diplomat, visited Chad, an African nation that is predominately Muslim, to meet with President Idriss Deby.
Recently, Deby was even heard praising Israel and its security services in conversations with visiting foreign diplomats. Diplomatic sources in Chad said that if the two countries were to re-establish ties, Deby would like Netanyahu to visit the country.
Chad is a Muslim African country surrounded by neighbors mired in armed conflicts. The prevailing anarchy in neighboring Libya is particularly troubling to Chadian officials, especially because Libya today is divided into three areas, with one of the areas controlled by the Islamic State group. Chad even sends its forces to areas where armed conflicts are taking place. For example, an intervention force it dispatched to Darfur — a war zone where the international community says Sudan has perpetrated genocide — was able to reduce the level of violence there. Chad also sent an intervention force to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country also mired in ongoing armed conflict.
In the near future, the president of Togo, Faure Gnassingbe, will visit Israel, ahead of another planned trip to Africa for Netanyahu in the coming months, this time in West Africa.
Chad
Of the African outreach, the Jerusalem Post adds:
In addition, one senior official said, Israel’s close security ties with Egypt and Jordan – as well as well-known but under the-radar contacts with Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf countries – have convinced many African countries that they no longer have to be worried about Arab pressure against developing ties with Israel, since the Arab states themselves have ties with Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Dore Gold also hosted delegation of Saudi academics and businessmen, led by retired general and diplomat, Anwar Eshki. Haaretz explains the significance
While this wasn’t an official visit, it was a highly unusual one, as Eshki couldn’t have traveled to Israel without approval from the Saudi government.
Gold and Eshki had been meeting secretly for some time, and went public with their relationship at a gathering in Washington last year.
• Last but not least, Gold talked to the Times of Israel about building relations with Arab countries, French plans for a peace summit later this year, and his relationship with Mahmoud Abbas.
• Haaretz: Hamas announces its participation in West Bank municipal elections scheduled for October.
• I’ve been wondering what’s the best age to let my son start diving through flaming hoops . . .
Gaza summer camps train teens for jihad
• Despite including Sabra hummus in a list of “morally squishy” foods, New York Magazine denied to The Algemeiner that it supports BDS.
NY Magazine
• British lawmaker Jenny Tonge blamed Israel for rising jihadism. The House of Lords member from the Liberal Democrat party, was quoted saying:
Tonge said “the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel is a major cause of the rise of extreme Islamism and Daesh,” using the Arab-language acronym of the Islamic State terrorist organization. She said Israel was provoking a generation of violent extremists who would have “a justified grudge” against Israel and Britain . . .
Tonge resigned in 2012 from the position of party whip, a task equivalent in the United States to speaker, after she spoke about Israel’s demise at an event promoting the boycott of the Jewish state.
• I see Reuters discovered the word terror . .
Reuters
Commentary/Analysis
• An Arab Christian who grew up in Baathist Iraq argues that Israel is the only country that can stop jihadists from annihilating Mideast Christians. Luma Simms argues that this would require Arab Christians to overcome their own anti-Semitism,
But all Arab indoctrination—no matter the sect—instills animus for Jews and the state of Israel. Anyone who claims that the Arab world—Muslim and Christian—is not pathologically anti-Semitic is delusional. This is the elephant in the room in the Arab Christian subculture; the secret sin no one wants to bring to the light.
Because for Arab countries to acknowledge a Jewish state would require that they acknowledge Jewish people as people, as human persons. Their anti-Semitism does not allow them to do this. Anti-Semitism in the Arab bosom sets the relationship between the Arab and the Jew in what Austrian-German Jewish philosopher Martin Buber called the “I-It” relationship, rather than the “I-You.” They cannot recognize the state because they cannot recognize the people; they cannot recognize the people because they have established a relationship with them not as human persons but as an “It,” as object rather than subject. (This is a natural outcome of the dhimmis culture, where laws ensured Jews and Christians knew their place as second-class citizens.) . . .
Israel is the last hope for Arab Christians; it’s as simple as that. America is not leading on the refugee issue, especially for Iraqi Christians. Yet helping them, doing good to the Christians in the Arab world, would require Israel overcoming her neighbors’ anti-Semitism, even of those Christians who will not ask for help because of their prejudices.
Read the whole thing.
flag-star-cross
• Over at the National Post, Robert Fulford asks why democracies should take a “balanced” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some things, after all, just don’t balance out.
“Balance” implies that the opinions of two antagonists should be regarded as morally equivalent. It would mean that our ambassador would consider that Israel and the Palestinian Authority are similar entities, with similar goals and similar methods, to be taken seriously in a similar way . . .
Should a Canadian treat with balance a community that teaches young people to revere terrorist martyrs? Sympathy, perhaps, or some level of understanding. But balance? No.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . .
– Zalman Shoval: The spring of Israel’s foreign relations
– Melanie Phillips: The invisible Jewish victims
– Yossi Beilin: Terror of the depressed
– Gershon Baskin: BDS harms Palestinian interests
– William Jacobson: Will anti-Israel academic boycotters now boycott Turkish universities?
– Benjamin Weinthal: Is the BDS movement facing economic warfare?
– Yoram Ettinger: Palestinian demographic manipulation
– Whaleoil: Anti-Semitism in New Zealand
– Wall St. Journal: Israel 1, OECD 0 (staff-ed, click via Google News)
Featured image: CC BY john Wright with additions by HonestReporting;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07212016-brazil-lawsuit/
Columnist Who Called Israel a ‘Nazi State’ Loses Lawsuit
Israel Daily News Streamabout 1 hour ago
IDNS-japan-subway-770x400
16
Today’s Top Stories
1. Brazilian Jews won a lawsuit against a columnist who called Israel a ‘Nazi state.’ The affair began in 2006, when Gilson Gondim, a columnist for the Jornal da Paraiba newspaper, used that term in a column about the IDF’s retaliation for Hezbollah kidnapping two soldiers.

After Jornal da Paraiba shut down his column, Gondim took legal action against the Sao Paulo Jewish federation, claiming it had “gagged” him.

2. The Palestinian Authority announced it would work with Sudan to “restrain” Israeli outreach in Africa one day after Israel and Guinea renewed diplomatic ties yesterday.

The West African nation, which is predominately Muslim, severed ties with the Jewish state following the Six-Day War, but officials in Conakry have more pressing concerns than Palestinian solidarity.

One diplomatic official said that Guinea, like many other countries in Africa, was concerned about Islamic terrorism, and learning from Israel’s expertise in this matter was a major reason for the decision to establish ties.
Guinea

3. Boycotters boycotted, reports the JTA. Good for El Al, which took its business to another area of Spain.

A Spanish city trying to increase tourism lost a direct flight connection with Israel over its symbolic support for boycotting the Jewish state, a Spanish newspaper reported . . .
 
Santiago’s support for boycotting Israel reflects “disregard not only toward Jews but for its own residents by tearing down a project that would have brought Santiago revenue, tourists and jobs,” ACOM said in a statement.

4. Send Me a Speaker From HonestReporting: Our USA executive director, Gary Kenzer, is available to speak and run media bias workshops in your community, synagogue, church, school or organization, and is now scheduling events across the US starting from September. Find out more . . .

Gary-US-cities

Israel and the Palestinians
• Six-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh was released from the hospital one year after Jewish terrorists killed his parents and brother in an arson attack. The boy, who suffered burns over 60 percent of his body, will be raised in the village of Duma by his maternal grandparents.

• This is not satire.

Hamas turns Gaza terror tunnels into summer tourist attraction

• Visiting Maale Adumim, The Media Line finds a community waiting to be annexed to Israel.

• Reporter Daniella Cheslow visited the Shuafat refugee camp to learn more about the life and murder of Baha Nabata, a Palestinian activist who worked with Israel to improve the lives of the camp’s 70,000 refugees.

Nabata was gunned down while “directing traffic as a road team repaved the rutted main avenue in Shuafat” in May.

• The fatwa you were waiting for:

Haaretz

Around the World
• London Jews are outraged after a teenager who placed lit firecrackers into the pockets of Jewish pedestrians was ordered to pay a mere £20. Nobody was injured, but community leaders are urging the police and courts to take hate crimes more seriously.

• A terror suspect with possible sympathies for Islamic State eyed attack on an Arizona Jewish community center and government buildings.

• Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed flatly rejected Black Lives Matter demands that the city’s police stop counterterror training with the “Apartheid Israel” police. Background at The Algemeiner.

“I happen to believe that the Israeli Police Department has some of the best counter-terrorism techniques in the world and it benefits our police department from that long-standing relationship.”
• Following the Nice terror attack, the International Business Times takes the pulse of French Jews.

Commentary/Analysis
• The Erdogan government is purging Turkish academics, restricting their travel, and even halting scientific cooperation with the rest of the world. Professor Eugene Kontorovich calls out BDS in this tweet of the day.

EVKontorovich

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Amb. Ned Siegel: Relationship of younger American Jews with Israel eroding
– Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians: Refugee camps or terrorist bases?
– Norman Bailey: After coup, can Israel rely on Turkish commitment to rein in Hamas?
– Brig.-Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser: One year after the Iran nuclear deal
– Cnaan Liphshiz: Can hobbled EU live up to promise to combat anti-Semitism?
– Matthew Levitt: Don’t forget, or deny, Hezbollah’s brutal crimes

Featured image: CC BY Max Talbot-Minkin with additions by HonestReporting; Chicago CC BY-NC Tom Carroll; Los Angeles CC BY-NC Mitchel; Miami CC BY Gunther Hagleitner; San Francisco CC BY Ray Bouknight;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07202016-jordan-fence/
Israel Approves Fence Along Northern Jordanian Border
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
1. Defense officials approved a fence along the northern Jordan border to prevent jihadist infiltrations.

Fear of scenarios in which booby-trapped cars speed towards the border or shootings occur prompted the plan, which was drawn up by the Defense Ministry and approved by senior ministry officials.
 
This stretch of the fence will be located in the southern Golan Heights, close to where the borders of Israel, Jordan and Syria meet.
 
On Tuesday, Israeli security forces arrested two Palestinians attempting to smuggle firearms across the border from Jordan. The troops seized 20 handguns and five M16 assault rifles. The suspects were taken for interrogation.

2. A Brazilian university rector apologized to Jewish community leaders for seeking an educator to teach ‘Zionism is racism’ as a concept at the ABC Federal University in Sao Paulo.

3. The Knesset passed a contentious law that would allow an MK to be expelled for supporting armed struggle against Israel or racist incitement. Expulsion would require a two-thirds majority, with at least 10 votes coming from the opposition. An expelled MK would also be able to appeal to the Supreme Court. More on the story at YNet and the Times of Israel.

4. The Alternate Guide to Gaza: Inaccuracies and omissions turn an SBS documentary into very subtle propaganda piece.

5. HonestReporting Prompts New York Times Clarification on Gaza Settlements: The Gray Lady corrects the record after we were in touch with editors.

6. Stabbing in Germany, Stabbing in Israel: Why the Double Standard? A man in Germany tried to murder people with an axe in an attack with parallels to recent Palestinian terror attacks. So why was it reported so differently?

Israel and the Palestinians
• Israelis and Palestinians are disputing the cause of death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy during a clash in eastern Jerusalem last night. The Palestinians claim that Muhyi Sedqi al-Tabakhi was killed by police gunfire, while a police spokesperson said security forces only fired tear gas and stun grenades.

Here’s one noteworthy piece of context CNN notes, but was overlooked by reports I saw at Reuters and AP:

Israeli border police officers were in Al-Ram to return the body of a suspected Palestinian attacker who was killed in an incident approximately a week ago, she said.
• France named its first female ambassador to Israel. Helene Le Gal replaces Patrick Maisonnave, who steps down in September.

• Shots fired at IDF post near Lebanon border this morning. No injuries reported as army investigates if gunfire was deliberate or accidental.

• Details are scant but Israeli jets reportedly fired on Syrian military posts in the Golan today. Jerusalem Post coverage.

• Developing story out of Africa . . 

Around the World
• Turns out UK Jewish students will “no longer have a say on who represents them in the National Union of Students (NUS)’ Anti-Racism, Anti-Facist taskforce,” the Daily Telegraph reports.

But from now on the Jewish member will be decided by the National Executive Council (NEC) and President Malia Bouattia, after the NUS passed a motion that brought the changes to effect.
 
The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) have condemned the decision saying that it is just another example of “Jews being pushed out of university life.”
Bouattia’s election to head of the NUS in April, 2016, created a firestorm of controversy over her various comments in support of Palestinian terrorism and the BDS movement. The NUS is an umbrella organization of some 600 British student unions representing seven million students.

Commentary/Analysis
• Nuclear arms control expert Emily Landau explained the newly disclosed add-on document to the Iranian nuclear accord, and the problems it raises for enforcement with i24 News.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Amb. Alan Baker: International funding of salaries to terrorists
– Samuel Ramani: The Israel-Kazakhstan partnership
– Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Wanted: A UK Brexit for widespread anti-Jewish bias
– Wall St. Journal: Tehran teaches its children (staff-ed, click via Google News)
– Abdulrahman Al-Rashed: The dilemma of eradicating extremism

Featured image: CC BY-NC David Jones with additions by HonestReporting;

http://honestreporting.com/07192016-nuclear-deal/
US, Iran At Odds Over Nuclear Deal ‘Add-On Document’
Israel Daily News Stream7 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
atom1. According to a document seen by the Associated Press, “key restrictions” imposed on Iran’s nuclear program by last year’s accord “will start to ease years before the 15-year accord expires, advancing Tehran’s ability to build a bomb even before the end of the pact.”

Israeli officials told the Times of Israel that this add-on document would allow Tehran to “produce fuel for many bombs in a very short time.”

It says that as of January 2027 — 11 years after the deal was implemented — Iran will start replacing its mainstay centrifuges with thousands of advanced machines.
 
Centrifuges churn out uranium to levels that can range from use as reactor fuel and for medical and research purposes to much higher levels for the core of a nuclear warhead. From year 11 to 13, says the document, Iran will install centrifuges up to five times as efficient as the 5,060 machines it is now restricted to using.
 
Those new models will number less than those being used now, ranging between 2,500 and 3,500, depending on their efficiency, according to the document. But because they are more effective, they will allow Iran to enrich at more than twice the rate it is doing now.
The US State Dept. denied the existence of any secret add-on documents while Tehran defended the provision as “a matter of pride.” Who to believe?

2. Moving forward with offshore gas exploration, Lebanon is issuing exploration permits, including one in waters contested by Israel. According to Globes:

The disputed area totals some 850 square kilometers and is triangular, with its vertex in Rosh Hanikrah and its base along the line shared by Israel, Cyprus and Lebanon’s EEZ. An agreement signed between Israel and Cyprus in December 2010 supports the Israeli claim while a similar agreement signed between Cyprus and Lebanon has not been authorized by the Lebanese Parliament. As stated above, Lebanon intends to publish the bloc anyway.
Wouldn’t ya know, there’s plenty of  Lebanese in-fighting over the permits as well.

3. Defense News reports that Jerusalem has all but conceded that the new US military aid package will cancel the 26% “manufactured in Israel” allowance. With the Obama administration not wavering on “Buy America,” Israel’s military industry is “bracing for lost funding and layoffs.”

In interviews, those sources say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pretty much resigned himself to a new paradigm whereby all of Israel’s grant aid — with the exception of funds appropriated for missile defense and pre-agreed upon programs — will eventually be spent in the United States.
Israel and the Palestinians
European Union• An internal reported drafted by the European Union blames the wave of Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks on Israel, saying that the “occupation” is the “root cause” of the violence. The EU Observer saw the document, which was drafted in December.

It is not meant to be published, but is designed to act as a reference document for meetings of EU foreign ministers in Brussels and for proposals put forth by the EU foreign service.
• European envoys accused the IDF of violating international law by confiscating European Union-funded shelters for Bedouins — then leaked their letter to The Guardian‘s Peter Beaumont.

Unfortunately, there’s no indication that Beaumont sought out an Israeli response. Nor did his dispatch acknowledge(as the Daily Mail noted earlier this year) the EU’s abuse of diplomatic immunity to build structures and roads on disputed West Bank land is meddling — in violation of international agreements.

• Looks like the Times of London is competing with low-brow tabloids with snarky headlines like this.

Times of London

• A Gaza tunnel collapsed, killing a Islamic Jihad terror operative and injuring two others near Khan Yunis last night.

It was the second deadly tunnel collapse for the group this month and the 14th such incident reported since the beginning of the year.
• A Hamas military court in Gaza sentenced to death three Palestinians accused of “collaborating” with Israel. Two other Palestinians were given lengthy prison terms.

Around the World
• Nice article about the Israeli view of the French terror situation. The New York Times even used the t-word in its headline.

New York Times

• Reuters reports that the EU is already eyeing Israeli technology for spotting potential lone wolf terrorists online.

“Nine out of 10 times, the terrorist has contacts with others who provide support or inspiration, so meta data still applies,” said Haim Tomer, a former Mossad intelligence division chief turned security consultant.
• In Nice, a reporter from Israel’s Channel 2 had a fascinating exchange with a woman warning him that it’s dangerous for him as an Israeli.

• The Jerusalem Post takes a look back at the AMIA bombing. It was 22 years ago when a suicide bomber driving an explosive-laden car into the Argentine Jewish communal headquarters in Buenos Aires, killing 85. A second dispatch captures the Jewish community’s anger and frustration over the lack of justice.

• Mexico, Israel target tripling annual trade to $2.1 billion

• A day after Palestinian officials sought to reassure Lebanese authorities that they wouldn’t allow jihadist groups to seize control of refugee camps inside Lebanon, a Palestinian man was killed by unknown gunmen in the Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp, near Sidon.

By long-standing convention, the Lebanese army does not enter the Palestinian camps in the country, leaving the Palestinian factions themselves to handle security.
 
That has created lawless areas in many camps, and Ain el-Hilweh has gained notoriety as a refuge for extremists and fugitives.
• Worth reading: To learn more about how the US might boost airport security, the Los Angeles Times compares security measures at Ben Gurion Airport with Los Angeles International Airport. Volume of traffic, baggage screening, passenger profiling, bureaucracy, public attitudes, costs and more are all touched on here.

Los Angeles International Airport

Commentary/Analysis
• The Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) gave former ambassador Ron Prosor a soapbox to discuss Israeli counterterrorism lessons for Europe

No longer do these people need training camps, bomb-making expertise or even an order. All they need is an internet connection, incitement and the desire to kill.
 
In this digital age, terror cannot be met with an analog response. We need to keep up, and Israel has experience and expertise to share.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Adam Rasgon: A series of diplomatic setbacks for the PA
– Felice Friedson: Prepare for a life with terror

Featured image: CC BY Dustin Smous with additions by HonestReporting; atom CC0 Pixabay; EU flag CC BY-SA Irinawave; airport CC BY Glenn Beltz;

Hezbollah Claims It Sent Drone Over Israel
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago
IDNS-woman-laptop-cafe-770x400
24
Today’s Top Stories
1. Hezbollah claimed it sent the unmanned aerial vehicle that flew over Israeli airspace yesterday. Two Patriots missiles and an air-to-air missile failed to bring down the drone, which returned to Syria unharmed. Hezbollah claimed the drone was sent to photograph IDF maneuvers in the Golan. More at the Times of Israel and Defense News.

2. Israel advocates slammed UCLA and BDS-supporting campus groups over a leaked confidential report condemning a student leader for neutrality on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The report claimed that former Graduate Student Association (GSA) president Milan Chatterjee violated university policy on “viewpoint-neutral funding” in 2015, for initially refusing to fund any program organized by or featuring a pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) group . . .
 
“The fact that a student official would be sanctioned for seeking to avoid embroiling the UCLA GSA in the fraught politics of the Middle East tells you all you need to know about the political agenda of his detractors and the cowardice of those that enable them.”
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Raymonde Mamane
Raymonde Mamane

3. A French Jewish woman died of injuries from last week’s Nice truck attack. The overall death toll now stands at 84, according to French authorities.

Raymonde Mamane, 77, was critically injured and put on a respirator following the outrage but succumbed to her injuries on Sunday. Her sister Clara Bensimon, 80 is still in a coma according to reports, which also say she had to have her legs amputated as a result of her injuries.
Israel and the Palestinians
• A Palestinian stabbed two Israelis, lightly injuring them at a West Bank checkpoint by a refugee camp near Hebron this afternoon. A gun battle broke out when IDF forces went to demolish the home of a Palestinian terrorist last night. Also last night, an Israeli-Arab was arrested for trying to steal a soldier’s weapon outside an army base.

• Nominally, this New York Times piece is about Islamic State-inspired lone-wolf terror, but the underlying ideas of incitement, inspiration and linkage also applies to the last few months of Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming, and shooting attacks.

• The Egypt Independent picked up on Israel’s new ambassador to Cairo, David Govrin, arriving to take up his new position. Govrin replaces Haim Koren.

• The background for this tweet by Khaled Abu Toameh: In 1975, Ahmed Jabara (a.k.a. Abu Sukkar) killed 15 people and injured another 77 in downtown Jerusalem with a boob-trapped refrigerator.

Israel sentenced Jabara to 30 years in prison, but released him early in 2003 as a gesture to Yasser Arafat. After he died of a heart attack in 2013, the PA honored Jabara with a military funeral.


Around the World
• Turkey reportedly thanked Israel for its support during coup attempt.

• Foreign Policy takes a closer look at how Hezbollah has evolved while fighting in Syria, and what it means for Israel.

• What can France learn from Israel?

Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Amos Guiora: As Israelis know, live as if there is no terrorism, but deal with its reality
– Yossi Melman: How do you stop a lone wolf terrorist?
– Judith Bergman: Europe is not Israel
– Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians power struggle between young guard and old guard
– Yoav Limor: Drone infiltration: Lessons must be learned

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07142016-abbas-preconditions/
Abbas Sets Preconditions for Cairo Peace Summit
Israel Daily News Stream1 day ag
Today’s Top Stories
1. Mahmoud Abbas is reverting back to form, insisting on preconditions before agreeing to join Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a potential Cairo peace summit. The preconditions: A settlement construction freeze, negotiations based on the pre-1967 borders, and timeline for the talks. Officials in Jerusalem called the Palestinian pre-conditions a non-starter.


2. For the first time in several years, Israel opened the Erez border crossing with Gaza to vehicular traffic delivering humanitarian supplies. Israeli security at Erez seized what the Times of Israel called a “dizzying collection” of electronic equipment being smuggled to the Strip.

Among the items found were 14 small unmanned aerial vehicles and components, security cameras, satellite communications equipment, surveillance cameras, packages of motion sensors binoculars, laser pointers for weapons, communications equipment and electronic boards, tasers, weapons components, diving watches equipped with flashlights, flippers, miniature cameras, GoPro cameras, DVR cameras, and other banned electronic components.
Till now, Israeli aid to the Strip has passed exclusively through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is closer to the Israeli-Gaza-Egyptian border. If I’m not mistaken, Israel shut down Erez in May, 2008 after a Palestinian truck carrying four tons of explosives blew up on the Gaza side of the crossing, killing nobody but the suicide bomber driving it.

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3. The JTA reports that “Police in 14 German states reportedly conducted raids on 60 individuals in an attempt to root out the sources of anti-Semitic and other hate postings on the internet.”

Suspects were accused of posting anti-Semitic, extremist and xenophobic messages, including denial of or relativizing the Holocaust, celebrating aspects of National Socialism and using Nazi symbolism, and calling for attacks on refugees and politicians. Evidence was seized at several locations.
4. CNN’s Anti-Israel “Comedian” Rages Against Israel – And It’s Not Funny: Distorted and cherry-picked facts, plus severely missing context are no laughing matter.

5. Check Out HR’s Shareable Graphics: In case you missed it, HonestReporting has been posting shareable graphics on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

indoctrination

Israel and the Palestinians
• The Israeli Bedouin who climbed over the Gaza border fence into the Strip has been identified as 19-year-old Juma Ibrahim Abu Ranim, from Hashim-Zina, an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev.

• Israeli security forces thwarted a Palestinian stabbing attack during an arrest raid in eastern Jerusalem.

• Pokemon politics as Israelis, Palestinians get in on the app.

Commentary/Analysis
Facebook blood• Over at Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes and Zoe Bedell take a serious look at whether a lawsuit filed by a group of victims of Palestinian terror against Facebook has legs. In short, yes, because Wittes and Bedell argue that Facebook could win the battle but lose the war.

Does this complaint meet the Second Circuit’s standard of proximate causation? That may well end up being a jury question, which is to say that at least some of the allegations in this complaint may satisfy the proximate cause requirement for purposes of a motion to dismiss. A reasonable jury, after all, might well be able to conclude that Facebook’s provision of service to Hamas figures and Hamas’s aggressive use of those services constituted a “substantial factor” in the attacks, even if not a “but for” cause, or that the attacks were a “foreseeable consequence” of Facebook’s allowing use of its system by Hamas figures.
 
If that ends up being how a court looks at the motion to dismiss, this case will be a very big deal, even if Facebook eventually wins. After all, even establishing the principle that a social media company can theoretically be liable for a terrorist’s use of its systems would be a bit of an earthquake both in the law and in the operating environment for companies that seek to make their services available to all users.
• Newsweek picked the brains of a few analysts to determine the “winners and losers” of last year’s Iranian nuclear deal.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Elliott Abrams: Israel, secrecy, and American meddling
– Jonathan Tobin: Israel’s phantom isolation
– Itamar Segal: We won’t break, and we won’t be silent
– Amb. Alan Baker: International funding for salaries and benefits to terrorists
– Alana Herbst: Jewish in Jordan
– Avi Issacharoff: 10 years after the Second Lebanon War, Israel isn’t in Hezbollah’s sights
– Paul Gross: Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism – the UK Labour Party as a test case

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07122016-drones-sinai/
Israeli Drones Target Sinai Jihadis
Israel Daily News Stream1 day ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel conducting drone strikes in Sinai with Cairo’s approval. Israeli media was all over this Bloomberg News scoop.

A former senior Israel official said his country has conducted numerous drone attacks on militants in Sinai in recent years with Egypt’s blessing. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential military activity.
2. Failing to secure enough “yes votes, the PA and Jordan delayed a UNESCO resolution denying Jewish ties to the Temple Mount. According to the Times of Israel, it’s not clear if/when the resolution will be put back on the UNESCO agenda.

3. Will Benjamin Netanyahu meet Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo? The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post and Israel HaYom picking up on Arab reports all take a stab at the question.

Israel and the Palestinians
money3. Worth reading: The Associated Press takes a detailed, nuanced look at PA stipends to terrorists and their families.

The “martyrs’ fund” and another fund supporting families of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel are nominally PLO institutions, but are funded by the Palestinian Authority.
 
The fund for families of several thousand Palestinians held for alleged anti-Israeli activities, from stone-throwing to shooting attacks, has a 2016 budget of $125 million, according to the website of the Palestinian Authority’s Finance Ministry . . .
 
The next battleground could involve international assistance, as Israel argues that the martyrs’ fund is inadvertently subsidized by Western and Arab aid to the Palestinian Authority. The self-rule government receives several hundred million dollars a year in foreign aid.
• Israeli defense minister banned a group set up by Hezbollah and Iran that has been targeting Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. According to the Jerusalem Post, Al-Harak Al-Shababi “sought to disguise itself as a youth movement working to change the situation in the West Bank and Jerusalem through steps in the civilian sphere.”

• The Knesset passed a contentious bill to rein in foreign-funded non-governmental organizations.

• Togo president to visit Israel in August

Mideast Matters
• Worth watching: On the 10th anniversary of the Second War in Lebanon, BBC News reporter Katy Watson talked to soldiers and civilians in northern Israel, and even joined a border patrol.

BBC

 

• Reuters picked up on a report by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon concluding that Iranian ballistic missile tests earlier this year aren’t consistent with the spirit with the nuclear accords. The tests include one in which the Iranians wrote the words, “Israel must be wiped out” on the side of the rocket. Ban concludes that “it is up to the United Nations Security Council to decide if they violated a resolution.”

• Iran, once quiet about its casualties in Syria and Iraq, now glorifies them. The New York Times examines what changed:

The hard-liners, they say, want to prevent any decline in Tehran’s absolute support for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and to undermine the moderates, who they fear might be open to a political settlement in which Mr. Assad would step down . . .
 
“By being open about our role, we can prevent a diplomatic solution in Syria,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, a hard-line political analyst close to Iran’s leaders. “First, we must defeat all terrorists in the battlefield. Only after that can we negotiate with them.”
• Heh: Muslim media fell for a hoax news story of Saudi commercial flights to Israel which included a photoshopped image.

Around the World
• Coming attractions on German TV:

German news network accuses Israel of teaching children to hate

• South African authorities busted a group of people planning terror attacks against Jewish institutions  and the US embassy. According to the Johannesburg Star, the foursome — including twin brothers — were operating on behalf of Islamic State.

• Canada‘s Green Party sponsors resolutions targeting Israel

• As Dallas debate unfolds, Israel shows ‘killer robots’ don’t have to be deadly.

• An Islamic State “kill list” of 1,700 Americans discovered online includes a number of Jewish leaders. Details at the JTA.

“The lists appear to be directed toward ‘lone wolf’ ISIL supporters who may be inspired to carry out attacks,” SCN said in a statement, using one of the acronyms for the terrorist group. “However, there have been no reported incidents to date in which an ISIL-inspired individual has carried out an attack on any individual appearing on these lists.”
Commentary/Analysis
• Plenty of commentary about Israeli-Egyptian peace maneuvers.

– Avi Issacharoff: What next, a Knesset speech by Egypt’s Sissi? Well, maybe
– Yossi Melman: What is Netanyahu prepared to give to join Sunni bloc?
– Raphael Ahren: Egypt-Israel rapport brings high hopes, but don’t lose perspective
– Seth Frantzman: Egypt’s return to a role in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking

Abbas, Sissi, Netanyahu
Mahmoud Abbas, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Benjamin Netanyahu

 

• Here’s what else I’m reading today .  .  .

– Judith Bergman: UNESCO: Entertainment for bored diplomats
– Herb Keinon: Automatic voting against Israel at UNESCO? Not anymore
– Mordechai Kedar: I incite, therefore I am
– Eyal Zisser: Nasrallah’s illusions
– Yaakov Lappin: Assessing the Israel-Hezbollah covert war
– Elliott Abrams: Iran is cheating on the nuclear deal
– Zalman Shoval: A year since the Iran deal
– Matthew Levitt: Iran’s support for terrorism under the JCPOA
– Margaret Sullivan: Face it, Facebook. You’re in the news business
Featured image: CC BY John Ragai with modifications by HonestReporting; money CC BY-SA 401(K) 2012; Abbas via YouTube/Charlie Rose; Sisi via YouTube/PBS NewsHour; Netanyahu via YouTube/Charlie Rose;



http://honestreporting.com/idns-07132016-state-department/
State Dept. Funded Anti-Netanyahu Campaign
Israel Daily News Stream2 seconds ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. A US Senate report revealed that US taxpayer money was indirectly used to influence Israelis to vote against Benjamin Netanyahu during last year’s Israeli elections. The State Dept. sent money to an organization called OneVoice, which channeled the money to V15 (short for Victory 2015), which raised suspicions in Jerusalem at the time. The Washington Times was first to report on the Senate’s findings.

Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report . . .
 
Mr. Netanyahu survived the election, and the U.S. spending was not deemed illegal because the State Department never put any conditions on the money. Investigators also said OneVoice didn’t turn explicitly political until days after the grant period ended.
 
“The State Department ignored warnings signs and funded a politically active group in a politically sensitive environment with inadequate safeguards,” said Sen. Rob Portman, chairman of the investigative subcommittee. “It is completely unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed — immediately after the grant ended — against the leader of our closest ally in the Middle East. American resources should be used to help our allies in the region, not undermine them.”
The Senate report also chided then-US consul general Michael Ratney for improperly deleting emails related to OneVoice’s activities. Ratney now serves as special envoy to Syria.

The report was released the same day the US State Dept. criticized a contentious law passed by the Knesset requiring greater transparency from non-governmental organizations that receive funds from foreign governments.


2. A Bedouin man said to be going through emotional distress climbed the Gaza border fence and entered the Strip before Israeli soldiers could stop him. Hamas already holds two other Israeli nationals, Avraham Abera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who entered Gaza separately.

3. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is trying to evacuate 15 Israelis stuck in war-torn South Sudan. YNet reports that rescue efforts for the aid workers and businessmen is complicated by the fact that A) “Some of the Israelis trapped in the country are in Juba, while others are scattered elsewhere,” and B) The airport in the capital city, Juba, was closed, though a cease fire appears to be holding and the airport may have re-opened today.

South Sudan, which gained independence five years ago, has been torn apart by a two and a half year-long civil war.



Israel and the Palestinians
• A Palestinian trying to run over soldiers raiding a West Bank weapons workshop last night was shot and killed.

• European diplomats sent a report back to Brussels urging stronger measures against Israeli settlements, but the EU brass isn’t acting on their recommendations. The Guardian, which saw the report, explains why:

Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, is not thought to be an ardent advocate at present of further practical steps to enforce differentiation between Israel and Israeli settlements, while one previously strongly pro-Palestinian EU member, Greece, is said to have shifted its position, seeking better economic and diplomatic relations with Israel.
• BDS activists entering Israel on tourist visas operate freely.

• Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon warned the UN that Hezbollah has 120,000 missiles aimed at the Jewish state.


• Facebook shut down Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal’s account, poor thing.

• Worth reading: New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman describes the behind scenes work involved in his story about Yoni Netanyahu, the prime minister’s older brother killed at Entebbe.

Mideast Matters
• French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault reportedly met with Hezbollah figures during a visit to Lebanon. Israeli officials were very unhappy.

• Noting the 10th anniversary of the Second War in Lebanon, the Christian Science Monitor interviewed a Hezbollah member who recently returned from Syria, and an IDF soldier who fought in the 2014 Gaza war. The format raises a whiff of moral equivalence, but it’s clear that one is willing to embrace martyrdom to destroy Israel while the other would rather be left alone but will defend his country if pushed.

Commentary/Analysis
• Regarding the Knesset’s contentious NGO law, Yonah Jeremy Bob tells everyone to take a deep breath. The changes for effected NGOs are minimal, and the issue is really about BDS. BDS?

So what was the purpose of the law? In essence, to publicly shame the NGOs – and massively anger the EU.
 
In November, the EU labeled products from the West Bank settlements as distinct from Israel.
 
This move was viewed by the Israeli government as joining hands with the global forces trying to promote boycotts of Israel.
 
The law was effectively supposed to label them back. It would not stop them from funding left-wing groups, but it would engage in shaming them just as the EU was engaging in shaming Israel for its West Bank settlements.
• Tweet of the day from Eugene Kontorovich:


• Spilled ink and burnt pixels assessing the Mideast’s diplomatic moves:

– Amb. Danny Danon: Reviving relations between Israel and Africa (click via Google News)
– Aaron David Miller: Can Egypt’s Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative work?
– Alex Fishman: Egypt’s diplomatic games
– Ron Kampeas: Bibi pulls off Turkey, Egypt, Africa trifecta

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Ira Rifkin: Painful group memories and the news media’s (potentially) curative powers
– Jeffrey Salkin: Ten minutes with my Arabic teacher
– Eitan Haber: Lebanon: A long quiet
– Bret Stephens: Truth catches the Iran deal (click via Google News)
– Eli Lake: What the nuclear deal’s backers owe to Iran’s victims
– Clifford May: Obama’s Iran experiment

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07102016-germany-iran/
Germany: Iran Illegally Seeking Nuke, Missile Tech
Israel Daily News Stream1 day ago
IDNS-videocam-crews-770x400
Today’s Top Stories
1. According to German intelligence reports seen by the Jerusalem Post, Iran’s seeking illegal nuclear and missile technology, as well as its biological and chemical warfare capabilities. State Department spokesman John Kirby struggled to answer reporters’ questions about the matter.

Kirby then said that living up to the nuclear deal means not procuring illicit nuclear technology, but disagreed with reporters that Iran’s attempts to obtain this equipment would be in violation of the agreement.
2. YNet reports UNESCO’s due to vote on another resolution denying Jewish ties to the Temple Mount while denouncing Israel.

The draft decision presented by the Palestinians and Jordanians includes a number of problematic points in relation to Israel. Firstly, the draft calls on Israel to return the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa mosque to “the historic status quo,” a new phrase implying that the sites should be returned to their pre-1967 status.
 
The recommendations constitute another attempt to remove any Jewish presence from the Temple Mount. Moreover, the text repeatedly refers to the entire compound as an exclusively holy Muslim site and makes no exception on the issue of the Wailing wall. In October 2015, a similar attempt failed when brought before UNESCO.
 
Throughout the entire document, Israel is repeatedly alluded to as an occupying force on the Temple Mount while being accused of breaching international treaties such as the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention. According to the claims, Israel is causing damage to historic buildings on the mount, to gates, windows and to ceramics while simultaneously preventing repair and renovation projects initiated by the Jordanians.
 
According to Israeli officials, there is also an attempt to compose an indictment against Israel vis-a-vis its activities on the Temple Mount which will be presented to the Criminal Court of Justice in the Hague.
After UNESCO passed in April a one-sided Temple Mount resolution against Israel in , France and Brazil both apologized for supporting it “in error.” It’s not clear from YNet when the resolution is to be voted on.

Dome of the Rock

3. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is scheduled to visit Israel to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The last time an Egyptian FM visited Israel was in 2007.

4. HonestReporting Launches HR Brazil: Our new Portuguese-language initiative will give Brazilian news consumers the opportunity to fight media bias and speak up for Israel. HR Brazil will be spearheaded by Tamara Stern, formerly of Rio de Janeiro and recent immigrant to Israel, who will monitor and critique Brazilian news services, translate selected HonestReporting content, and build a social media community.

HonestReporting Brazil will be hosted via the main HonestReporting website at http://honestreporting.com/brazil

Follow HR Brazil on Facebook and Twitter, and click to subscribe to the mailing list. For more information, contact hrbrasil@honestreporting.com and please help us spread the word.


HonestReporting Brazil

Israel and the Palestinians
• An Israeli man was injured in a Palestinian drive by shooting in the West Bank near Tekoa Saturday night. The Israeli was wounded in the leg. Searching for the shooter, the IDF sealed off two villages. A Jordanian man is in Israeli custody after he crossed the border and attacked an Israeli woman on a road south of Lake Kinneret on Friday. It’s not clear how the man got into the country, but a preliminary police investigation indicated that the man was mentally unstable.

• Israel HaYom picked up on Palestinian kids dressing up as Hamas goons on the Temple Mount to mark the end of Ramadan. I wonder how the Islamic Waqf, which administers the Temple Mount, explains why this isn’t incitement, brainwashing, and abuse of a holy site all rolled into one.


• A Gaza tunnel collapse killed an Islamic Jihad operative.

• The number of Palestinian shooting attacks are up while stabbing attacks are down. The trend caught the attention of the New York Times.

• Archaeologists working in Ashkelon found what they say is the first Philistine cemetery ever discovered.  I don’t think the Palestinians will like Associated Press coverage.

The most famous Philistine was Goliath, the fearsome warrior who was slain by a young King David. The Philistines’ legacy lives on in the name Palestine, the term the Romans gave to the region in the 2nd century, and which is used today by Palestinians.
 
Archaeologists and biblical scholars have long believed the Philistines came from the Aegean region, based on pottery found in excavations of Philistine sites.
 
But scholars have debated where exactly in the Aegean region the Philistines came from: mainland Greece, the islands of Crete or Cyprus, or even Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey.
It makes my head spin: I’ve seen Palestinians also claim they’re descendants of Canaanites — even pre-Canaanites. What does all this mean for claims that Jesus was a Palestinian?

Gustave Dore
David defeating Goliath, by Gustave Dore

Around the World
• An elderly Moroccan-Jewish couple was found murdered and dismembered in their Casablanca home. The couple’s gardener has been arrested and confessed, saying he killed them in order steal their money and jewelry.

• Toronto teacher calls a terrorist who killed a 4 year old Israeli girl a “hero”

• Over at New York University, Students for Justice in Palestine blame Israel for the latest US police shootings of blacks. Yair Rosenberg responds:

What’s particularly pernicious about the posting is that by erasing the American history of predatory conduct towards blacks and instead exporting culpability to a scapegoat, SJP short-circuits any necessary national conversation about U.S. police violence. As long as shadowy outside forces can be blamed for the problem, there will be no internal reckoning.
• Spanish leftists are under fire for an anti-Semitic cartoon ahead of President Obama’s upcoming visit. The JTA explains:

The Madrid branch of Izquerda Unida, or United Left, on Thursday tweeted the cartoon image, which depicts a thick-lipped Obama standing behind a wall amid explosions while hugging a Jew with side curls, a kippah emblazoned with the Star of David and a suit in the light-blue color on the Israeli flag. The Obama character is shown slipping a wad of cash in or out of the Jew’s pocket. It used the hashtag #ObamaGoHome.

Commentary/Analysis
•  Jordan wants to push forward with a civilian nuclear program, but Mudar Zahran calls it a “potential Chernobyl next to Israel.” Jordan’s lack of expertise in nuclear know-how and financial requirements makes the endeavor a non-starter, but is Is Amman blaming the lackluster Western interest on Israel?

The king does not seem to realize his problem is not with Israel, but in fact with the big Western powers, including the U.S. A well-informed source told me years ago that Israel was not lobbying at all against Jordan’s nuclear program. In fact, it is those Western powers that don’t seem to be convinced Jordan could run a safe, effective or reliable program . . .
 
Let’s not forget, Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria was very stable when Israel reportedly destroyed his secret nuclear reactor, which was placed near Raqqa, the very city that is now considered ISIS’ capital . . .
 
Jordan’s government lacks the transparency and governance in general and seems to not have much nuclear knowledge. Even if the regime had the 100% best intentions, such a program could end up a new Chernobyl that would endanger Jordan, Israel and American interests.
• Israeli columnists gave Prime Minister a thumbs up on his Africa trip.

– Raphael Ahren: In Africa, Lion King Bibi begins to outroar the Palestinians
– Yoaz Handel: Netanyahu’s Africa trip worth every penny
– Norman Bailey: Israel adds diplomatic skill to its armory

For a window into how Africans viewed the trip, see a Rwandan New Times staff editorial and Kenyan columnist Gitau Warigi.

• A number of Knesset members got op-ed soapboxes of note this weekend. MK Yair Lapid takes on the UNRWA, Sharren Haskel takes on Palestinian incitement, and Michael Oren explains why Europe’s continuing fixation on Jews must not grip the US.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Judith Bergman: Do houses matter more than Jews?
– Ruthie Blum: Abbas’ holiday attack on the Quartet
– Sardar Aziz: Israel and Turkey’s new deal: A pessimistic Kurdish view
– Pinhas Inbari: An Ottoman return to Jerusalem
– Fred Maroun: The Arabs’ Historic Mistakes in Their Interactions with Israel
– Sever Plocker: Facebook is not the enemy
– Dennis Ross: Sending Iran the right deterrent signals to preserve the nuke deal
– Michael Wilner: Has Iran complied with the nuclear deal?
– Jonathan Tobin: Iran violates the deal. Now what?

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07072016-israel-in-africa/
Continuing Developments From PM Netanyahu’s Africa Tour
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. Continuing developments from PM Netanyahu’s Africa tour:  Tanzania will open an embassy in Israel and Israel promises to help Kenya build a wall to keep out terrorists.

2. Abbas calls on UN Security Council to reject the Quartet report because it mentions Palestinian glorification of violence against Israelis. PA calls to boycott Quartet.

3. After arresting two Gazans with terror financing cash hidden in their shoes, Israel gained valuable intelligence about new Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror tunnels.

4. HonestReporting’s “Red Lines: The Eight Categories of Media Bias” is a video series based on our latest E-book (available on Amazon for a small fee). In the fourth video of the series, the Jerusalem Post’s Steve Linde and Gil Hoffman, The Algemeiner’s Ruthie Blum, and Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs discuss lack of context with HonestReporting.

5. AP’s Messy Math: In an article on Israel’s response to recent attacks, the Associated Press vastly under-counts Palestinian terrorist attacks.

Israel and the Palestinians
• At least 10 Palestinians were injured in clashes with the IDF in the West Bank village of Dura early Wednesday morning after troops attempted to arrest suspects in the Hebron area.

• Three IDF soldiers were lightly injured in a possible car-ramming attack near the Neve Daniel settlement outside of Bethlehem.

• NGOs fume over lack of Gaza rebuilding, call for war crimes charges, urge Israel to lift blockade of Gaza.

Mideast Matters
• With the release of a report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the Quartet of Middle East mediators, Reuters Israel Bureau Chief Luke Baker notes a reduction in international criticism of Israel (though in my opinion the reduction is minimal) and increased criticism of Palestinian incitement. Yet Baker accuses (with no meaningful evidence) that the change must be due to Israeli political gamesmanship rather than a reflection of real world events.

• The International Business Times reports that Islamic State published a “kill list” with 1,700 names targeting members of US churches and Jewish synagogues.

Around the World
• Did Israel tamper with phones belonging to French government officials during diplomatic visit?

• British Labour Party leader and outspoken detractor of Israel Jeremy Corbyn says that he regrets calling Hamas and Hezbollah ‘friends.’

• Israel-Africa relations are very much in the news lately, but they have actually been growing for a long time. I discovered the hashtag #israelinafrica which helped me find interesting content on Twitter and Facebook including this fascinating chart.

Commentary/Analysis
• While most obituaries of Elie Wiesel have been positive and often quite touching, a few have used his death as an excuse to promote an anti-Israel political agenda. We previously wrote about The Independent, The Alegemeiner reviewed The New York Times and similar examples popped up in The New Yorker and The Chicago Tribune.

• Tablet Magazine asks whether Palestinian nationalism may be coming to an end.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Tablet Magazine: I Am Woke: Why I Am Finally Raising My Voice Against Jewish Erasure in the Anti-Racism Movement.
– The Tower: Palestinian Boycott of Quartet Should Ring Alarm Bells.

Featured image: CC BY-NC Azizul Hadi with additions by HonestReporting;