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http://honestreporting.com/idns-06-04-2014-jordan-protests/
Jordanian PM Resigns Amid National Protests
BY PESACH BENSON  JUNE 4, 2018
Today’s Top Stories
1. Jordanian Prime Minister Hani Mulki submitted his resignation to King Abdullah amid widespread demonstrations against the government’s austerity measures.

King Abdullah asked Omar al-Razzaz, a former World Bank economist, to form the new government. Razzaz was education minister in Mulki’s government. According to a government-linked daily, Razzaz has been tapped as the country’s new prime minister.

Israel’s closely watching developments in the neighboring kingdom. Haaretz offers more background.

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2. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is en route to Europe today to discuss Iranian entrenchment in Syria and the future of the Iranian nuclear deal. Haaretz and AP preview what’s in store for talks with his counterparts in Berlin, Paris and London.

Meanwhile, the Times of London got a peek at one of the key Iranian atomic documents pilfered by the Mossad earlier this year, “a memorandum that formally hands responsibility for the production of weapons-grade enriched uranium to the Iranian defence ministry.”

Mr Netanyahu will use the latest analytical findings from the captured archives to make the case to Theresa May on Wednesday that the multinational accord was essentially invalid since it was based on a falsehood: Iran’s contention that it had never pursued a nuclear weapons programme and that it needed to enrich uranium purely for peaceful purposes. “What Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency about its capacities was almost comical compared to what we have here,” said a senior Israeli intelligence officer involved in the analysis of the seized documents.

A second Times of London report about the Iranian docs, explains that “Israel wants to ensure that Britain, France and Germany do not break ranks and strike an arrangement with Iran that could ease the pressure. Mr Netanyahu has to convince the Europeans that their position — that Iran has never strictly violated the 2015 accord — is untenable.”

iranian atom

3. IDF vet gets death threats after she’s falsely accused of killing Gaza medic. The soldier, Rebecca, asked the Times of Israel not to publish her last name. She never served as a sniper and was released from military service more than two years ago.:

The accusation against the IDF veteran may have originated with a woman from Chicago, with over 13,000 followers on Facebook, who posted a photograph of Rebecca that was published four years ago on the army’s official page.

A few hours later, the “Freedom for Gaza” Facebook page, with its more than 100,000 followers, published Rebecca’s picture, claiming that she had “executed a 21-year-old Palestinian nurse in Gaza.” As of Sunday evening, the post has been shared nearly 15,000 times . . .

The IDF spokeswoman encouraged Rebecca to make a video in response to the claim, which was later published by the StandWithUs pro-Israel advocacy group.

In the News
• Haaretz: Fire damage to Israeli agriculture near the Gaza border is estimated at $1.4 million — and rising. Netanyahu ordered funds be withheld from the PA to compensate victims of kite attacks.

• A Palestinian man with an axe was shot and killed by the IDF trying to breach the Israeli border fence today. A second Palestinian was wounded but managed to escape back to the Strip.

• A group of Gazans infiltrated Israel, setting fire to defense equipment before returning to the Strip on Sunday evening.

building campaign

• The Foreign Press Association in Israel says its seeing a spike in invasive strip searches of journalists returning from Gaza to Israel.

• For the first time, Israel is participating in a major NATO exercise near Russia. The Saber Strike exercise in Poland and the Baltic states involves 18,000 troops from 19 nations.

• US Ambassador David Friedman fired a broadside at the international press corps — at a media event no less. The Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post were on hand.

• Police arrested the mayor of Hadera and three other municipal officials on suspicions of corruption.

• Days after Bashar Assad denied the presence of Iranian military personnel in Syria, a senior Iranian general denied his forces will leave Syria.

• Israel rushes emergency aid to Guatemala after volcano eruption kills 25

• Corbynistas are crying foul over Tracy Ullman’s satirical take on Jeremy Corbyn’s struggles with antisemitism. Watch the BBC video and judge for yourself.

Commentary
• After getting an exclusive look at some of the Mossad’s stolen Iranian nuclear documents (articles one and two), a Times of London staff-ed bluntly calls out Tehran’s untruths:

The Times has argued in the past that scrapping the accord would propel the regime to accelerate its nuclear sprint. But an agreement based on deceit loses its validity. If Iran had been serious about setting aside a military option it would have surrendered its archive as did South Africa in the early 1990s. The International Atomic Energy Agency must now be allowed to do its job under the Iran deal and the comprehensive safeguards agreement. All suspect military sites should be opened for inspection. If Iran refuses, then sanctions should be reimposed immediately.

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

– Ron Ben-Yishai: Radical Muslim groups trying to drag IDF into war in Gaza
– Avi Issacharoff: Rocket fire from Gaza is a message, but it’s not clear who the audience is
– Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Iranian blood money, Palestinian blood
– Efraim Karsh: Gaza: It’s not the economy, stupid
– Yoav Limor: Hamas’ new test
– The Australian (staff-ed): Scrutinize Palestinian funding
– Amb. Dore Gold: Russia constrains Iran
– Dr. Michal Yaari: Israel and Saudi Arabia: From foes to potential friends
– Melanie Phillips: Europe’s about-face on Israel
– Borzou Daragahi: Iran wants to stay in Syria forever

Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND Franck Paul; atom CC0 Pixabay; reading CC0 Public Domain Files;

German Intelligence: BDS a Security Threat, Antisemitic
BY PESACH BENSON  JUNE 3, 2018
http://honestreporting.com/idns-06-03-2018-germany-bds/
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Today’s Top Stories
1. In a precedent-setting move, German intelligence labeled BDS as antisemitic and a security threat, the Jerusalem Post reports. “Labeling BDS as antisemitic could have far-reaching consequences for German politicians and public and private organizations that engage in pro-BDS activity.”

David Friedman
Ambassador David Friedman
2. According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration is mulling giving Ambassador to Israel David Friedman more authority over the US consulate in Jerusalem, which is responsible for US relations with the Palestinians. The practical arguments for the move are technical and bureaucratic, while the arguments against it are more symbolism.
For decades, the Jerusalem consulate has operated differently than almost every other consulate around the world. Rather than reporting to the U.S. Embassy in Israel, it has reported directly to the State Department in Washington, giving the Palestinians an unfiltered channel to engage with the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, Amb. Friedman discussed the embassy move, the Trump administration’s peace plans, bipartisan support American support for Israel and more in a Q+A with the Times of Israel.

3. Is a major American BDS umbrella organization linked to Palestinian terror groups? Tablet takes a closer look:

The US Campaign, which is officially called Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, coordinates the efforts of 329 different pro-BDS organizations “working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy … bound by commonly shared principles on Palestine solidarity as well as our anti-racism principles,” according to the group’s website.

But as Tablet confirmed , the group also helps facilitate tax-exempt donations to a Palestinian coalition that includes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other groups the U.S. State Department designates as terror organizations.

4. The Village Idiot: Irish Magazine’s Flawed Article: Investigative journalist Frank Connolly demonstrates that he has done very little investigating into the facts.

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Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli jets launched air strikes on terror targets in Gaza overnight in retaliation for Saturday evening mortar fire and burning kites. More than 500 acres of a nature reserve adjacent to Kibbutz Carmia were devastated by the worst fire yet triggered by the kites. Authorities said about one-third of the reserve was destroyed. By the way, Israeli media reports that Gazans have improved the way they play with fire, going beyond kites:

Today, authorities are battling helium balloons carrying long-burning materials like charcoal. The balloons are capable of flying several kilometers into Israel and sparking fires farther afield.

• Officials in Jerusalem and Damascus denied reports that a deal had been reached to remove foreign fighters — including Iranian and Hezbollah personnel — from near the Israeli-Syrian border.

• Israeli diplomats are upbeat about an emerging US strategy to combat the UN Security Council’s bias against the Jewish state. Whenever a one-sided resolution is introduced — in this case, a Kuwait-sponsored resolution condemning Israel and calling for international protection of Palestinians in Gaza — the US will put forward a counter-measure, or what Ambassador Danny Danon called “a proactive effort to expose the hypocrisy of the council.”

building campaign

• Hamas is in crisis, with no answers for improving Gaza’s quality of life, few regional allies, no leverage to get Israel and Egypt to lift the Strip’s blockade and no means of pressuring the Palestinian Authority on reconciliation. Gazans are questioning if the “March of Return” accomplished anything at all. I’m sure the terror group’s apologists will have what to say about this Washington Post report.

• Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is demanding answers (“assurances” in diplospeak) on whether or not Aussie aid to the Palestinian Authority was used for terror stipends. More on the story at The Australian.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blocked a Knesset debate over recognizing the Armenian genocide debate to avoid ‘aiding Erdogan,’ the Times of Israel reports.

• Israel will participate for the first time in a biennial naval exercise held in Hawaii at the end of June. With 27 countries taking part, the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise is the world’s largest. More at Israel Defense and Stars and Stripes.
Israeli Navy
• NATO won’t aid Israel if Iran attacks. “Jens Stoltenberg told the magazine Der Spiegel in comments published Saturday that Israel is a partner, but not a member and that NATO’s ‘security guarantee’ doesn’t apply to Israel.'” It’s obvious that Israel isn’t a full member of NATO, so the Jerusalem Post delves into why Stoltenberg stated this now.

• A 21-year old Palestinian medic, Razan al-Najjar, was shot and killed during Friday’s Gaza border clashes. The IDF said it’s investigating the shooting. Her death is indeed tragic. Peter Lerner shed a light on the complexities of the situation by tweeting a photo and a video of a Palestinian in what appears to be a white medic’s coat trying to breach the border fence. Palestinians lit tires, threw rocks and firebombs and flew flaming kites.

Around the World
• Jordan rocked by biggest anti-government protests in years as demonstrators rally against austerity measures.

Jordan’s economy has deteriorated in the last few years for several reasons, among which are the conduct of recent governments and the intake of over a million Syrian refugees. Despite the protests, opposition circles have not called to oust the government or king, who’s is seen as a stabilizing factor and a keeper of the kingdom’s institutions.

Meanwhile, the kingdom’s stability is a supreme security concern from Israel’s standpoint. At this point, officials in Jerusalem are closely following the demonstrations in Jordan as well as the regime’s efforts to halt the protest.

• The Daily Telegraph reports that Jeremy Corbyn’s right-hand man, John McDonnell (shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer), is president of a group campaigning in support of Labour figures accused of anti-Semitism.

• Following BDS protests, a major Japanese department store removed Israeli wines produced in the Golan.

wine

• Kings College London set a precedent by becoming one of the first UK universities to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

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

– Jonathan Marcus: Is Israel driving a wedge between Russia and Iran?
– M.K. Bhadrakumar: Russia censures Iran, expects Israel to help restore ties with US
– Zev Chafets: It’s time to recognize reality on Israel’s Golan claim
– Haviv Rettig Gur: Why Palestinians care what Donald Trump thinks about Jerusalem
– James Kennard: Hamas must be held to account for the failure of the Palestinian dream
– Amb. Mark Sofer: The truth behind Hamas and the Gaza protests
– Eldad Beck: The European media’s Palestinian propaganda
– Maj. Gen. (ret.) Gershon Hacohen: Is toppling Hamas necessary?
– Neri Zilber: Israel and Hamas: Negotiating with rockets and bombs
– Evelyn Gordon: Baby Layla shows what’s wrong with Israel’s PR
– Giora Eiland: Needed: A different Gaza strategy

quill and ink

– Robert Morgenthau: The dangerous perversion of ‘genocide’: Israel’s critics distort a crucial term
– Yossi Beilin: Gaza isn’t a lost cause
– Bassam Tawil: EU and Palestinian illegal ‘facts on the ground’
– Dror Eydar: It’s not the ‘occupation,’ it’s the Jews
– Jonathan Marks: Do Jews get to define antisemitism?
– David May: South Africa adds to its long record of Israel-bashing
– Edwin Black: Why International Farhud Day stymies invented Palestinian history
– Nick Timothy: Britain must make it harder for people to march in support of Hezbollah
– Keith Kahn-Harris: To ask Corbyn to support Israel is an impossible demand
– Spengler: The safest country for European Jews? Try Hungary

Featured image: CC BY Steve Soblick; Friedman via YouTube/US Embassy Jerusalem; navy via Instagram/israeli_navy; wine CC BY-ND Angelo Amboldi; quill CC0 Pixabay/Ashreila;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-31-2018-hunger-strike/
Palestinian Prisoners to Launch Hunger Strike
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 31, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. Worth reading: Ynet takes a deep dive look into how the Gaza cease-fire came about. Hamas and Islamic Jihad played games trying to look like they won, but Jerusalem didn’t bite.

2. If you’re anyway fasting during Ramadan, this doesn’t count. I mean, who isn’t fasting?

JPost

3. At the UN Security Council, Kuwait blocked a US statement denouncing Hamas for the rocket fire. Kuwaiti diplomats said they opposed the statement because they are pushing their own resolution on protecting Palestinian civilians — which may include international forces.

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Israel and the Palestinians
• The IDF released satellite images and other information about the 65 terror targets it hit in Gaza this week. This includes a drone storage facility, a weapons manufacturing site, a Hamas naval base and unmanned submarine vessels, weapons depots, command and control centers, and more.

• Jerusalem Post: Now that the Trump administration has instructed the State Department not to refer to the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem or Golan Heights as “occupied,” diplomatic reports are struggling to articulate policy and describe updates.

• Would the Palestinian Authority cut security ties with Israel if Israel were to lift the blockade of Gaza?

building campaign

• An annual State Department report on religious freedom around the world found a lot of antisemitism in the Arab world, citing numerous examples from Arab news services. The Jerusalem Post explains:

The annual State Department report, documenting freedom of religion around the world, lists several examples of Arab press outlets perpetuating conspiracy theories and blood libels against Jews. Clerical sermons throughout the region often include antisemitic diatribes. And students are still educated with antisemitic texts printed by the states.

• Is the US moving towards quitting the UN Human Rights Council? An American campaign to reform the council, including ending its special scrutiny of Israel, was thwarted. Foreign Policy looks at how we got to this point and what may happen next.

UN Human Rights Council
The UN Human Rights Council
• Glad to see the Associated Press isn’t letting the investigation into Layla Ghandour’s death fall between the cracks. The dispute over the nine-month old girl’s death hasn’t been resolved — did she die of tear gas inhalation at the border clashes, as Palestinians claim, or did she die of complications from a congenital heart defect.

Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra told reporters in a WhatsApp group on Wednesday that officials are still “waiting for the forensics report” and that in the meantime, the infant’s name would be kept off the list of those killed in the protests.

• No link between Muslim immigration and anti-Semitism, says German study.

Commentary
word cloud

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

– Ron Ben-Yishai: In Syria, Iran is getting in Putin’s way too
– Anshel Pfeffer: Putin ready to ditch Iran to keep Israel happy and save Assad’s victory
– Zvi Bar’el: Gaza cease-fire: Egypt’s the big winner, and it will come at a price for Israel
– Elior Levy: All sides in Gaza escalation prepared for a very limited conflict
– Dan Margalit: A Gaza cease-fire, but only under these conditions
– Avi Issacharoff: The curious common interest behind the rapid Gaza-Israel flare-up and flare-down
– Yoav Limor: Hamas blinked first
– Jonathan Tobin: Why the Palestinians can’t say ‘yes’ to Trump
– New York Post (staff-ed): Who’s really behind the latest attacks on Israel
– Jerusalem Post (staff-ed): It’s time for a Gaza plan
– Carly Pildis: Jews get to define antisemitism


Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND Binuri Ranasinghe; UN Human Rights Council CC BY-NC-ND UN Geneva;

https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/2nd-gen-immigrant-teaches-brit-a-lesson-on-govt-oppression-hell-never-forget/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=conservative-brief-WJ&utm_campaign=dailypm&utm_content=western-journal
2nd Gen. Immigrant Teaches Brit a Lesson on Gov’t Oppression He’ll Never Forget
BY CILLIAN ZEAL 
MAY 29, 2018 AT 6:50AM

What does free speech and opposition to government oppression look like? One second-generation Briton just gave a viral lesson on those two principles that a lot of people aren’t going to forget anytime soon.

The video in question comes from a protest against the detention of activist Tommy Robinson — presumably outside of Downing Street in London, where the largest ones have been held — for recording suspects in a “grooming” case as they entered a courtroom.

Before we begin, it’s worth noting that Robinson — one of the founders of the English Defence League before he left the organization — is a highly controversial figure whose opinions on Islam and immigration are often associated with the U.K.’s far right.

Robinson claims he’s merely acting in opposition to the ideological excesses of Islam and the externalities it can bring — in this case, for instance, grooming gangs. However, his associations with extremists have made him one of the most problematic figures in all of Britain.

However, there was little problematic with what he was arrested for doing — namely, streaming Facebook Live video outside of a grooming trial in West Yorkshire on Friday morning.

Much like Robinson, so-called “grooming” trials have been controversial, but for different reasons. The trials cover a series of related incidents in which hundreds of children were raped, exploited or trafficked by gangs in cities across the UK. The controversy has centered around the fact that the vast majority of the suspects in the cases — 84 percent, according to reports — are Asian. At least, that’s how it’s reported in the media.

This covers for one of the other unpleasant truths involving these grooming gangs: The vast majority of the suspects are Pakistani and Bangladeshi, a fact which the media seems exceptionally loath to report. This has prompted activists like Robinson to take up the grooming cases as a cause celebre, which included merely streaming from outside the court. This got him arrested for breaching the peace.

It didn’t take long until his supporters came out to protest his arrest — including one second-generation immigrant who wasn’t doing anything threatening but was still pressured by a rather intimidating police officer to cease his protest.

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“I’m politely refusing, sir. I’m not trying to be rude to you,” the man said as he was being pressured to leave.

“I want you to know that any fear and intimidation you put in me doesn’t come anywhere near to the abstract horror I feel when children are being abused by grown men.”

The man said that he was standing up for the next generation of British people.

“I’m a second-generation immigrant,” he said. “I love my country. … I want democracy, I want fairness and I want when any of my English brothers who protest against injustice to be treated fairly.”

The problem, of course, is that England doesn’t actually have codified freedom of speech or the press. (For those who don’t believe me, quickly Google the term “superinjunction.”) This police officer could have arrested this man at any time, the same way Robinson was arrested.

RELATED: Violence in Post-Refugee Sweden Reaches Staggering Levels

Now, let me here state that I’m not a fan of Robinson. In my experience with him, he seems to be a very mild version of those Louis Farrakhan-esque individuals who sound sensible before the media and then break out the crazy and/or bigoted stuff whenever their supporters are the audience.

However, you know what Farrakhan — who is a demonstrably worse person — gets in America? The freedom to say whatever he wants. So do his supporters. That’s the way it should be.

In fact, that’s the only way to have a functioning society.

I don’t know what’s Robinson’s heart, but I do know his convictions against government oppression. And make no mistake, this is oppression. In fact, media outlets couldn’t even report on Robinson’s arrest over the weekend, forget even the grooming trial.

And this is in 2018 Great Britain, supposedly one of the bastions of democracy and free speech. Is this really what we’ve come to?

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Tentative Calm Returns to Israel-Gaza Border
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 30, 2018
http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-30-2018-gaza-calm/
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Today’s Top Stories
1. The Gaza border calmed down and just as this roundup was being published, the IDF Homefront Command lifted restrictions on Israelis living near Gaza. The IDF said that more than 180 rockets or mortars had been fired over Tuesday and early Wednesday morning. Israel retaliated with air strikes on 55 terror targets, including military compounds, weapons warehouses, manufacturing workshops as well as a terror tunnel reaching into Israel by curving underneath the Egyptian border. Hamas and Islamic Jihad jointly claimed responsibility for the barrages.

“Over the course of 22 hours, from 7 a.m. Tuesday to 5:17 a.m. Wednesday, sirens were triggered at least 166 times in southern Israel, according to the IDF Home Front Command, by mortar fire, rockets or, in some cases, heavy machine gun fire.” Seven Israelis were injured, three of whom were soldiers, by shrapnel from missiles or rockets intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system.

2. IDF officials said many of the rockets and mortars the Palestinians fired were made in Iran.

Less than a month after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps fired 32 rockets toward Israel’s northern Golan Heights, the Iranian-funded Islamic Jihad, along with Hamas, fired some 180 Iranian-made, 120-millimeter mortar shells from the Gaza strip. The barrage included the more precise 107-millimeter rocket, which has a range of about ten kilometers into the communities in southern Israel.

Our strength is grass roots.
3. One Gaza rocket hit the Strip’s own power lines, leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians without electricity. The Times of Israel reports that “Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz ordered [Israel Electric Company] to hold off repair work until the situation in the restive border region returned to calm, in order to ‘not endanger its workers.'”

4. HR Prompts CNN Tel Aviv Capital Correction: If CNN is uses “Riyadh” to represent Saudi Arabia, then Tel Aviv certainly isn’t the Israeli equivalent.
building campaign

Israel and the Palestinians
• I saw conflicting reports on whether Israel and Hamas had agreed on a ceasefire. This Times of Israel snippet reflects what I think is the mostly explanation. It may depend on the nuanced difference (if any) between agreements and understandings.

A senior defense official said Wednesday that Israel was prepared to refrain from further attacks on Gaza if terror factions in the Strip also kept the peace, indicating that an informal ceasefire has taken hold after a restive day . . .

Israel denied that it had reached an agreement, but a senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated to reporters that an understanding had been reached under which Israel would not conduct additional strikes in Gaza so long as no more rockets or mortar shells were fired.

• At the request of the US, the UN Security Council was due to hold an emergency meeting today to discuss the rocket fire. And there was plenty of international condemnation of Hamas. The barrage of rockets has certainly erased Palestinian PR gains from the “March of Return.”

yaacov lozowick
@yaacovlozowick
 This 5-day-old @TheEconomist column portraying Hamas as pragmatic hasn't aged well https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/05/26/the-leader-of-hamas-in-gaza-is-the-most-influential-man-in-palestine …

7:20 AM - May 30, 2018

The leader of Hamas in Gaza is the most influential man in Palestine
He has embraced “peaceful, popular resistance”. But will Hamas give up on knives and bombs?

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• After failures in 2014 war, Iron Dome showed it can now down mortar fire too.

• The Czech Republic reopened its honorary consulate in Jerusalem. “Opened in the early 1990s, the Czech honorary consulate in Jerusalem was closed in 2016 due to the death of the honorary consul.”

Around the World
• Lebanon to begin offshore oil exploration, including one block that is disputed in part with Israel. According to a plan approved by Lebanon’s outgoing energy minister, drilling would begin next year, AP reports.

offshore gas

• The value of the Turkish lira has collapsed in recent weeks and now antisemitic elements in the Turkish media are blaming Jews. It seems that they’re taking too seriously a tweet by Dr. Edy Cohen of Bar Ilan University. The Times of London explains:

Turkey’s press is almost exclusively controlled by the state or pro-Erdogan businessmen after a crackdown on critical media. It seized upon a tweet by Edy Cohen that the crisis in the Turkish currency began shortly after the Israeli ambassador to Turkey was ordered to temporarily leave. Dr Cohen is a specialist in Nazi propaganda in the Arab world at Bar-Ilan University.

“Don’t you know that half of the world’s wealth belongs to only one Jewish family, which is Israel’s primary supporter?” Dr Cohen said, in a tweet directly addressing President Erdogan and including the hashtag “Support the Turkish lira”. It was intended to be ironic, but was quickly picked up by Turkish media. The Anadolu Agency and Arabic language TRT service, which are both controlled by Ankara, responded by saying that the academic had levelled the blame for the lira’s decline at a “Jewish lobby”. Dr Cohen retweeted TRT’s article but told The Times that he had been misrepresented.

Hassan Nasrallah
Why is Hassan Nasrallah smiling?
• “Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has amassed a net personal worth of around $250 million due to his organization’s illegal drug smuggling operations,” according to an Arab media report picked by Israel HaYom.
Due to economic sanctions the U.S. has reimposed on Iran and the massive reduction of Tehran’s budget to Hezbollah, Al-Ittihad reported, compounded by the heavy financial toll exacted by involvement in the Syrian civil war, Nasrallah ordered an expansion of the organization’s drug-related activities – which resulted in extensive financial gains for Hezbollah and a personal windfall for Nasrallah himself.

Hezbollah• British police said they can’t ban Hezbollah flags from next month’s Quds Day parade in London. Why?

A letter sent to MP Louise Ellman, the vice-chair of the Labour Friends of Israel, said that police would allow the controversial flag to be raised once again at the June 10 parade because parliament had “consciously chosen” to proscribe only the military wing of Hezbollah – but the group’s flag is “shared across all elements of that organisation.”

• Democratic candidate for Congress who criticized Israel faces charges of antisemitism.

• Jewish center at Oxford hit with anti-Semitic incidents

• Distressingly disproportionate Dutch discrimination: the data’s damning.

There are only 40,000 Jews who live in The Netherlands out of a total population of 17 million, which means 0.2 % of the population, but Dutch Jews were the victims of more than 40 percent of the country’s criminal discrimination cases in 2017, reveals an overview published annually by the Public Prosecution Service.

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

– Amos Harel: With eye on bigger threats, Israel quickly agrees to Hamas’ request for cease-fire
– Herb Keinon: From Iran to Gaza – connecting the dots
– Dr. Eran Lerman: Hamas’ junior partner, Iran’s hidden hand
– Yoav Limor: Hamas must choose between war or peace
– Zvi Bar’el: The reasons Islamic Jihad is violating Hamas’ rules
– Daniel Siryoti: Gaza: Egypt holds the key
– Sam Sokol: For reporters covering Gaza, charges of bias overshadow the stories they witness and tell
– Moshe Arens: Will Iran withdraw its forces from Syria?

https://www.patriotnewsalerts.com/george-h-w-bush-hospitalized/?utm_medium=ci&utm_source=push&utm_campaign=pna
George H.W. Bush hospitalized while vacationing in Maine
May 28, 2018
George H.W. Bush hospitalized while vacationing in Maine
Image via Video Screenshot
Sadly, one of our former presidents finds himself in health trouble again.

After only having arrived in Maine a few days ago, former President George H.W. Bush was rushed to the hospital early Sunday.

Too Much
It would appear as though the former president may have pushed himself a bit far after the death of his wife.

President Bush was clearly and understandably devastated after the death of his wife.

After that ordeal, he was hospitalized for a blood infection.

Most expected him to stay home and recover after his release, but that is not Mr. Bush.

Instead, he made the long journey to Maine, where the family typically spends its summers.

While the former president seemed in good spirits after the trip, it took a toll on him.

News broke early Sunday that Bush had been hospitalized again.

This time for fatigue and low blood pressure.

A spokesman for Mr. Bush stated he is “awake and alert, and not in any discomfort.”

Longest Living President
All eyes will no doubt be on Bush, as he continues to struggle with his health.

Bush overtook Gerald Ford as the longest living president in the history of our country this year.

Ford passed away in December 2006 at the age of 93 years and 165 days.

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George H.W. Bush will turn 94 on June 12, already having surpassed Ford.

Our thoughts are with the former president for a speedy recovery, so he can celebrate many more birthdays.

 



Israel Hit By Biggest Gaza Mortar Barrage in Years
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 29, 2018
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Today’s Top Stories
1. Gaza tensions grew as Palestinians fired 28 mortars from Gaza at southern Israeli towns this morning, including one which landed next to a kindergarten (no children were present). More mortars were fired over the course of the day; the IDF retaliated with air strikes on dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets including a terror tunnel that which reached 900 meters into Israeli territory. As this roundup was published, five Israelis were reported injured.
IDF

@IDFSpokesperson
5h
Replying to @IDFSpokesperson
As part of the strike, an offensive Hamas terror tunnel was neutralized near Kerem Shalom Crossing. The terror tunnel starts in the Gaza Strip, crosses into the Sinai, and infiltrates Israel from there pic.twitter.com/rV7jQwjrYT
IDF

@IDFSpokesperson
 This tunnel was designated for terror purposes and smuggling. The tunnel was detected in its construction phases near the Kerem Shalom Crossing, through which many goods are transferred to Gaza residents pic.twitter.com/Jxkni9ARqP

2:19 PM - May 29, 2018
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Overnight, prior to the mortar fire, Sderot was hit with machine gun fire.

Haaretz, the Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post are all liveblogging the latest developments.

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2. According to Israeli media reports, Israel and Russia reached a secret agreement to keep Iranian forces away from the Israeli-Syrian border:

Under the apparent agreement coming together, Israel will accept the return of Syrian regime soldiers to the border on the Golan Heights, in exchange for Russia guaranteeing there are no Iranian or Hezbollah forces in the area, Hadashot TV news reported.

Russia will also call on all foreign troops to leave Syria, including not only Iran and the Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah, but also the United States and Turkey, the report said . . .

However, [Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s] statement suggested Russia was ready to allow Iran to maintain a foothold in other parts of the country.

More on the story at Jerusalem Post. Meanwhile, Moscow denied reports that its air force intercepted and turned back Israeli jets over Lebanon yesterday.

Amos Yadlin
@YadlinAmos
 1.The Russian call for all foreign forces to leave Syria is a positive development with respect to the threat posed by Iranian entrenchment there.That being said,it is important to remember that the Iranians were not party to that announcement and Assad did not ask them to leave

8:01 PM - May 28, 2018
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3. The Israeli Navy stopped a “reverse flotilla” attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Several boats leaving the Strip and headed for Cyprus carried Palestinians looking for medical treatment outside of Gaza, students to study abroad and activists.

According to the IDF spokesperson’s office Hamas was able to stop some of the boats from crossing the nine mile limit of the fishing waters and Israeli navy ships stopped the rest.

Thursday marks the eighth anniversary of the Mavi Marmara raid, in which Israeli forces intercepted a Turkish-organized flotilla of ships trying to break the Gaza blockade. Ten Turkish nationals were killed in violent clashes with Israeli naval commandos, rupturing Israel-Turkey relations.

LTC (R) Peter Lerner

@LTCPeterLerner
 ProvocationAlert! 
Calling all journalists reporting about the boat that's going to "break the blockade" please ask the organizers why they didn't leave #Gaza via Rafah crossing that is open during #Ramadan? Also, why risk lives of sick and injured? https://twitter.com/joedyke/status/1001373397417381888 …
9:41 AM - May 29, 2018
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4. 60 Minutes and the Illusion of Balance: Talking to two extreme sides and promoting stereotypical caricatures — while ignoring mainstream views — is not balanced journalism.

5. Sunday Express Train Wreck of a Story: Literally everything from a Sunday Express story on Gaza adds up to an utter train wreck.

6. South African Interviewee Calls to ‘Punish’ Israel Supporters: SABC News gives Israel-basher an uncontested eight-minute soapbox.

building campaign

In the News
• Great moments in Israeli “indiscriminate fire” — a new study by the The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center finds that 83 percent of the Palestinians killed in Gaza clashes were affiliated with terror groups.

According to the findings of examinations carried out by the ITIC, at least 112 Palestinians were killed during the “Great Return March.”[1] In an examination of the names of the fatalities on an individual basis, 93 were identified as terrorist operatives or affiliated with the terrorist organizations, i.e., about 83% of those killed in the “return marches.” Most of the fatalities (63) are from Hamas (about 56% of the total killed in all the marches). Fatah, which had 21 fatalities, played a minor role, with no significant impact on the events. The other organizations, including PIJ operatives (four fatalities) refrained from playing a significant role, maybe because of their awareness that this is a Hamas “project.” The organizational affiliation of 19 of the fatalities is unknown to the ITIC. It may be assumed that these are Hamas operatives or civilians who do not belong to any organization.

• Drone footage shows hundreds of acres of an Israeli nature reserve devastated by flaming Gaza kites.

• Legislation limiting Palestinian access to the High Court of Justice primarily on land issues passed its first reading in Knesset. Proponents say legal action regarding property ownership and home demolitions in the West Bank should be handled by Israeli district courts, just as they are inside Israel proper. Critics describe the bill is a “creeping annexation.”

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

– Avi Issacharoff: Behind Islamic Jihad’s barrage of attacks on Israel, the hand of Iran
– Amos Harel: Gaza barrage: Hamas has changed the rules, and Israel will respond forcefully
– Yaakov Lappin: Palestinian Islamic Jihad is like a grenade in a Gaza gas station
– Rosie DiManno: Hamas’ disastrous schemes make this the right moment to show solidarity with Israel
– David Saks: Those biased against Israel complicit in Hamas propaganda
– Seth Frantzman: Colonizing Gaza’s dead for kaddish theater
– Isi Leibler: A month of hypocrisy and moral decadence
– Smadar Perry: Between Russia and Iran: Assad’s comfortable position

Featured image: CC BY Sivesh Kumar; typing via Public Domain Files;

Soldier Killed in West Bank Raid Laid to Rest
http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-27-2018-ronen-lubarsky/
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 27, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel laid to rest Staff Sgt. Ronen Lubarsky, who succumbed to injuries during an IDF arrest raid near Ramallah. The 20-year-old member of the elite Duvdevan was hit in the head by a slab of marble dropped by Palestinians from the roof of a building in the al-Am’ari refugee camp. Ynet and the Times of Israel were on hand for the funeral.

Ronen Lubarsky
Staff Sgt. Ronen Lubarsky
2. Israel begins construction of underwater barrier to prevent Hamas infiltration by sea. The Jerusalem Post reports the barrier, which will stretch out into the Mediterranean from the southern town of Zikim, will be completed by the end of this year.

The barrier is made up of three layers including one below the sea level, a layer of armored stone and a third layer in the form of a mound. In addition to the three layers, a fence will surround the breakwater in order to provide a final security measure.

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3. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry removed baby Layla al-Ghandour’s name from its “March of Return” death toll pending the results of a pathologist’s report. The cause of the eight-month old girl’s death has been in dispute. Palestinians claim she died of tear gas inhalation but a Gaza doctor leaked to the press that Ghandour had a pre-existing congenital heart defect and did not believe the tear gas caused her death. The Guardian broke the development.

building campaign

Israel and the Palestinians
• Mahmoud Abbas is not being discharged from Ramallah’s Istishari Arab Hospital, his doctors announced today, contradicting an earlier announcement that the 83-year-old Palestinian leader would be discharged today. No explanation was offered for the abrupt reversal.

• IDF tanks shelled Islamic Jihad positions in Gaza after discovering a powerful explosive planted along the border fence this morning. Army sappers detonated the bomb in a controlled explosion. The Iran-backed Islamic Jihad confirmed two of its members were killed in Israel’s retaliatory strike. On Saturday night, Israel launched air strikes on Hamas positions in response to an attempted infiltration.

• Burning kites by the numbers, via Ynet.

– More than 300: Incendiary kites flown into Israel since April 13.
– 100: fires sparked in Israel
– 3,000: acres of wheat destroyed

kite
A kite with a Molotov cocktail is flown by Palestinians during clashes with Israeli security forces on the Gaza Israeli border east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on April 20, 2018. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90
• Experts weighed in at The Media Line on what an International Criminal Court probe of Gaza war crimes would mean for Israel.

• Israel’s High Court of Justice rejected petitions to stop IDF using live fire in Gaza border riots. Justices unanimously agree “that Hamas and other terrorist organizations were posing a huge challenge to the security forces by deliberately mixing terrorists in with civilians, including women and children, to make it hard for the army to pick out the former.”

• Worth reading from the Los Angeles Times: For Hamas, the deadly protests against Israel are a welcome diversion

• The South African cabinet got egg on its face after tweeting a call for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Israel evacuated its settlements and military presence in 2005.


Jeff Jacoby
@Jeff_Jacoby
 Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip 13 years ago, @GovernmentZA. But thanks for playing. https://twitter.com/GovernmentZA/status/999591516749393920 …

1:40 PM - May 24, 2018
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• In recent days, MKs Michael Oren and Tzipi Livni appeared in the media defending the IDF’s response to Gaza violence. So did army officers who talked to the Daily Telegraph.

• There’s a tug of war going on in the Saudi media over relations with Israel

• Mark your calendars: Britain’s Prince William arrives in Israel on June 25. His Mideast visit includes stops in Amman, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ramallah. Full details of the itinerary have yet to be announced. William, the Duke of Cambridge, is third in line to the throne and next month’s trip will mark the first ever official visit to Israel or the Palestinian Authority by a senior British royal. Take your pick of Ynet or Times of Israel coverage.

Window Into Israel
• US paid Netanyahu confidant’s firm $150k while embassy was being moved to Jerusalem. Sigh.

• Sheldon Adelson, who owns Israel HaYom, refused to consent to an alleged attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu to make an illicit deal with a rival newspaper according to Israeli media reports. In what is known as Case 2000, the prime minister is under investigation for pursuing a quid pro quo with Yediot Aharonot publisher Arnon Mozes in which Netanyahu would advance legislation handicapping Israel HaYom in exchange for more favorable coverage.

According to the TV report, Netanyahu asked Adelson to help consummate the deal, but the American casino tycoon refused. Evidence provided by a state’s witness in the case, former Netanyahu aide Nir Hefetz, shows that Adelson acted with propriety, the report said.

No details were provided on the manner in which Netanyahu allegedly asked Adelson to assist him.

Yediot

Around the World
• A British court convicted a woman for posting Holocaust-denying videos on YouTube. “Alison Chabloz, 53, who describes herself as a ‘holocaust revisionist’ was prosecuted over three anti-Semitic songs she posted on YouTube in September 2016,” the Daily Mail reports.

• According to a poll picked up by the JTA, the majority of French respondents say Zionism is a Jewish conspiracy.

• Pro-Palestinian activists set off stink bombs at NZ screening of Ben-Gurion film.

• Pro-BDS protesters shut down a meeting of the U. California-Santa Barbara student senate when they realized a motion to call on the university to divest from companies “that provide military support to the occupation of Palestinian territories” was not going to pass. More at The Algemeiner and the UCSB Daiy Nexus.

• It’s hard for me to believe this accusation, but the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Islamic State-aligned rebels of digging up graves in the Yarmouk refugee camp in an effort to find the bodies of three Israeli MIAs. The PFLP is aligned with Bashar Assad, whose forces captured Yarmouk. The three MIAs, Zachary Baumel, Yehuda Katz and Zvi Feldman disappeared during the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub and are presumed dead.

This is not the first time that Assad’s supporters have accused Syrian rebels of receiving support from Israel in an attempt to undermine their legitimacy.

MIAs
Israeli MIAs Zach Baumel, Yehuda Katz and Tzvi Feldman
• Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was caught on film chanting ‘death to US, UK, Israel.’

• CNBC reported that Russia “conducted the world’s longest surface-to-air missile test.” The S-500 surface-to-air missile system is said to be capable of intercepting, among other things, the stealth F-35 jets which Israel used for the first time in air strikes on Syria earlier this month.

The S-500 surface-to-air missile system successfully struck a target 299 miles away, which the U.S. assessed is 50 miles further than any known test, said the sources, who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity.

Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn
• Jeremy Corbyn was dubbed ‘too stupid’ to tackle Labour Party anti-Semitism in an account of his meeting with Jewish leaders last month which was leaked to the UK’s Mail on Sunday.
The Labour leader is described as ‘bored, uninterested and condescending’ in a leaked account of his meeting with Jewish leaders last month to discuss the issue.

It suggests he lacks the ‘emotional or intellectual ability’ to comprehend their demands for more action to tackle the problem.

By contrast, he sprang into life with a ‘convulsion’ when told that his support for a ‘two state solution’ in the rift between Israel and Palestine meant he was a ‘Zionist’.

• Man arrested after 200 headstones vandalized with swastikas at an Illinois cemetery.

• German Jewish shareholders demand probe into bank’s BDS-linked accounts.

Commentary/Analysis
crowdsourcing• Harnessing the power of the crowd certainly has its place, and I’m all for holding the media accountable. But I don’t share Elon Musk’s faith in the people — no matter how well-meaning he may be — to rate the “core truth” of news articles or the credibility of reporters. As crowdsourcing became a thing, it opened a lot of doors for people trying to game the truth. See Devin Coldewey‘s take.

• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend. . .

– Matthew Brodsky: The media’s Palestine narrative reads like fan fiction
– Avi Issacharoff: If you’re asking about Abbas’s successor, you’re not paying attention
– David Weinberg: The diplomatic day-after Abbas
– Zvi Bar’el: To get Iran out of Syria, Israel and the US must cooperate with Putin
– Ben-Dror Yemini: The boomerang effect of anti-Israel lies
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: The false hope of a Hamas hudna
– Shlomo Puterkovsky: Between UNHRC, ICC and EU: Palestinian legal war on Israel
– Clifford May: For Hamas and its friends, the worse the better
– Mark Humphrys: Solving Gaza crisis is easy — focus on living, not killing
– Los Angeles Times (staff-ed): How do fewer schools and jobs and more hunger help the Palestinians or the cause of peace?
– Seth Lipsky: The hypocrisy of American election investigations into Israel
– Ron Kampeas: Congress wants to define anti-Semitism for you. Here’s how that can get messy.
– Alexander Apfel: Livingstone’s resignation does not exonerate Jeremy Corbyn
– Dan Hodges: Stamping out anti-Semitism? No… Labour’s sinking back into its racist swam
– Ruthie Blum: UNRWA’s “Palestinian refugee” fraud?
– Efraim Karsh: The privileged Palestinian ‘refugees’
– Philip Carl Salzman: Canada: A “different” kind of antisemitism?

 

Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND Emiliano; candles via Wikimedia Commons and pxhere; Vector trash can by Vecteezy; Corbyn via YouTube/VICE News; crowdsourcing CC0 Pixabay;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-24-2018-iran-missiles/
Secret Iranian Ballistic Missile Facility Exposed?
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 24, 2018
Today’s Top Stories
1. Researchers studying satellite images stumbled upon a secret Iranian facility that appears to be developing long-range missiles. The New York Times explains:

But an analysis of structures and ground markings at the facility strongly suggests, though does not prove, that it is developing the technology for long-range missiles, the researchers say.

Such a program would not violate the international deal intended to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, or any other formal agreement. Still, if completed, it could threaten Europe and potentially the United States. And if Iran is found to be conducting long-range missile work, that would increase tensions between Tehran and the United States.

Five outside experts who independently reviewed the findings agreed that there was compelling evidence that Iran is developing long-range missile technology.

Meanwhile, Israel accused Iran of making two unreported tests on ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, which would violate UN Security Council resolutions.

Our strength is grass roots.
Our strength is you.

2. The Media Line and the BBC take a closer look at what Mahmoud Abbas’ hospitalization means for Palestinian politics and succession of leadership. Australia’s ABC News found younger Palestinians are apathetic, saying there are no signs that younger leaders with new ideas will emerge.

“A lot of older people … they’ve lived the past history of Palestine,” said fellow law student Lana Alkhmoui, 20.

“Now I think we need new ideas. New leadership.”

But none of the Birzeit University students believed a shift to a new generation would actually happen.

And judging by the names most commonly mentioned as possible successors to Mr Abbas, they’re right.

3. The US is considering cutting funds to three UN organizations which the Palestinians recently became members of. The Palestinians joined the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Chemical Weapons Convention which is upheld by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Congress bars funding for UN organizations that give membership to the Palestinians.

building campaign

4. Gaza Border Coverage: The Blame Game: Was Israel able to effectively tell its story to the press corps?

5. As Israeli-Turkish ties deteriorate, the Knesset is mulling recognizing the Armenian genocide. HR’s Daniel Pomerants discussed its implications with i24 News.

Israel and the Palestinians
• A Palestinian man who opened fire on Israeli Border Police at a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem was apprehended this morning. Nobody was injured.

• IDF soldier critically hurt during arrest raid in West Bank. According to Ynet, he was hit in the head by a concrete block thrown by a Palestinian this morning.

@DanielGordis
 Headline today. Soldier "very critically" injured by Pal who tossed a chunk of granite on him from third floor. Not likely to make it. IDF: " we couldn't shoot b/c we weren't sure who did it." Not that anyone will report that. https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5269650,00.html …

2:17 PM - May 24, 2018

לוחם דובדבן נלחם על חייו: "משליך הפלטה לא זוהה ולכן לא בוצע ירי"
מפרטי האירוע שבו נפצע הלוחם באורח אנוש במהלך מעצר מבוקש ברמאללה עולה כי על אף שלבש מיגון מלא כולל קסדה, הוא נפגע מפלטת שיש גדולה שהושלכה מקומה שלישית. האחראי טרם נתפס. בצה"ל ציינו כי יש עלייה באירועי...

ynet.co.il
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• Israel is advancing plans for 3,900 new West Bank settlement homes. According to the Jerusalem Post:

This will include final approvals for 2,500 new homes and the advancement of plans for 1,400 homes. It is unclear how many of these projects are entirely new and how many were part of the more than 10,000 homes for which plans were advanced last year.

Martin Stropnicky
Czech Foreign Minister Martin Stropnicky
• A voice in the European wilderness: Czech Foreign Minister Martin Stropnicky stated that Hamas alone was responsible for the deadly Gaza violence:
In a statement entitled “Gaza — Telling things as they really are,” Foreign Minister Martin Stropnický also posited that deadly riots on May 14 had nothing to do with the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on that day.

“The fact is that Hamas, which is also recognized by the European Union as a terrorist organization and which still does not recognize Israel, is the only true ruler of the Gaza Strip, and as such is fully responsible for the form and objectives of the violent actions that have occurred on the border between Israel and Gaza in recent weeks,” he said.

• The Foreign Ministry says Israeli diplomats dominated the media during the Gaza riots, citing 161 media appearances by senior diplomats.

• Arab League severed ties with Guatemala over its embassy move to Jerusalem.

• Worth watching: Filmmaker Pierre Rehov followed up on his previous video about the Gaza clashes with Behind The Smokescreen Part 2. It shines a spotlight on the differences between what Hamas told the world and told Gazans about the “March of Return.” (I wanted embed the video, but the HTML coding wouldn’t cooperate.)

• This is satire:

Preoccupied Territory

Window into Israel
• Top ministers agree to axe law allowing PM, defense minister to declare war

• According to a survey picked up by Haaretz, “slight majorities of Israeli Jews do not want their government to consider the views of American-Jewish leaders on matters of conversion, prayer at the Western Wall, or the status of the Reform and Conservative movements in the Jewish state.”

Around the World
• New legislation seeks to define antisemitism US education system

• Students at Gutenberg University voted to ban BDS, becoming the second German university to do so. The resolution declares BDS antisemitic and an hostile to academic freedom, and prohibits student bodies from supporting or participating in BDS activities.

boycott the boycotters

Commentary/Analysis
• In a letter to the editor, AP’s former Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Gutkin denies AP or the news industry buries unfavorable stories about Hamas. He was responding to a scathing New York Times commentary by his former reporter, Matti Friedman.

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

– Anshel Pfeffer: Israel’s F-35 strikes carried message to both enemies and allies
– Amb. Danny Danon: Why the UN should condemn Hamas
– Max Boot: Trump is inflicting long-term damage on US-Israel alliance by politicizing it
– Rabbi Chaim Landau: Israel will survive the Middle East
– Terry Glavin: Even rational folks lose their minds when Israel comes up. Hamas counts on it
– Oded Granot: Exposing Iran’s lies
– Dr. Nimrod Gordon: The Israel-Turkey crisis and the need for containment
– Sohrab Ahmari: The EU picks Iran and Hamas
– Melanie Phillips: Livingstone’s departure: Labour’s cynical totem

Featured image: CC BY-SA J Sawkins; Stropnicky CC BY-NC-ND NATO; boycott CC BY-SA HonestReporting;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-23-2018-abbas-cartoon/
Abbas Poses for Photo-Op With Antisemitic Cartoon
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 23, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. Trying to calm rumors about his health (reports say he’s improving), Mahmoud Abbas released photos from his Ramallah hospital. One of the photos shows him reading a Palestinian newspaper, Al-Haya Al-Jadeda, featuring an ugly, antisemitic cartoon from the, uh, poison pen of Mohammad Sabaaneh featuring an Israeli soldier snatching a baby’s bottle and feeding it poison. Times of Israel coverage.

The cartoon was addressing the disputed death of Layla Ghandour an eight month-old baby who Palestinians said was killed after inhaling tear gas during Gaza border clashes. A Gaza doctor said the baby’s death was likely due to a pre-existing medical condition.

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter

Ofir Gendelman

@ofirgendelman
 Abbas' office published these photos showing him in hospital, in order to show that he is well.

Zoom in on the racist cartoon on the backpage of the PA's OFFICIAL paper, reminiscent of Nazi cartoons.

The "moderate" leader made sure that anti-Semitism is alive & well in the PA.

3:05 PM - May 22, 2018
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One scholar accused Abbas of deliberately choosing to be photographed with that cartoon:

Edy Cohen, chairman of the Kedem Forum for Middle East Studies, told The Algemeiner, “I just spoke with several people very close to Mahmoud Abbas, and it was explicitly told to me that Abbas picked the only [newspaper] where that cartoon was large. … So I understand that he chose it deliberately, because we’re talking about the biggest cartoon there was, so it would be seen. It’s a subliminal message.”

2. The Times of Israel reports the Trump administration is considering taking action against Palestinian diplomats in Washington following the PA’s request to the International Criminal Court to investigate what the Palestinians say are IDF war crimes during the Gaza border clashes.

According to a US law passed in December 2015, the Palestinian Authority is subject to penalties if it pursues the prosecution of Israelis at the Hague-based ICC. One of those ramifications includes the closing of their diplomatic mission to the United States, run by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“We are reviewing this latest development to determine if it requires changes to the operating status of the PLO office in Washington, D.C., which has been limited to activities related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians since November 2017,” a National Security Council spokesperson said.

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3. Eurovision cast doubt over next year’s singing contest in Israel with a tweet telling fans not to book flights yet. The Times of Israel reports:

It was not clear if the public statement was suggesting that Eurovision is reconsidering whether to hold the event in Israel, as required by the organization’s tradition of having the nation of each year’s winner host the contest the following year.

A Eurovision spokesperson contacted by The Times of Israel declined to provide details on what exactly about the location and timing was in doubt.
View image on Twitter

Eurovision

@Eurovision
 Are you already looking forward to next year’s #Eurovision? Us too! But don’t go booking your flights just yet, for official updates on where and when it’ll take place, keep an eye out for announcements on our official channels.

http://honestreporting.com/gaza-border-coverage-shame-on-the-media/
Gaza Border Coverage: Shame on the Media
BY SIMON PLOSKER  MAY 17, 2018

Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90
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We’re seeing a veritable tsunami of media commentary, most of it highly critical of Israel in the aftermath of this week’s Gaza border violence.

New information is now coming to light that calls into question the overwhelming and knee-jerk reaction of the media and elsewhere to place almost the entire blame on Israel for the violence and deaths that occurred.

Hamas publicly acknowledges 50 of its dead were operatives
The overwhelming narrative adopted by the media was one of Israel shooting dead unarmed civilians protesters who posed little to no threat.

This despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (see HonestReporting’s previous post) including social media posts from the protest organizers calling for participants to bring concealed weapons and encouraging them to breach the fence and kill or kidnap Israeli soldiers or civilians.

Yet, with the death toll at some 62 Palestinians, the truth is steadily leaking out. 50 of the dead were claimed by Hamas official Salah al-Bardaweel as their operatives.

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In addition, Islamic Jihad have claimed three more of the dead as their own.

“But the IDF didn’t know their affiliation when snipers opened fire on them.”

So what?

However, it does go some way to explaining the malevolent intentions of those Palestinian men that most likely led to their deaths either in mounting direct attacks on the IDF or attempting to breach the security fence.

The Associated Press has published a dedicated report, which will hopefully make its way into many international media outlets.

While other media outlets such as CNN have reported the story, most of the British media, which has been some of the harshest, has, so far, conspicuously ignored it.

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Some may question the credibility of al-Bardaweel when he claimed 50 Hamas dead. Yet, the media appear to have no problem with the credibility of casualty figures released by the Hamas controlled Gaza Ministry of Health.

Also of note is the attitude displayed by some media that still sticks the knife into Israel by implying that this is really about Israel’s own PR efforts. Take this from AFP:

The remarks were seized upon by Israel in an attempt to fend off the harsh global criticism over the deaths and prove they were orchestrated and led by the Islamist movement Hamas.

Why is it that the media malign Israel’s efforts to provide legitimate public diplomacy yet cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the deliberate media strategy deployed by Hamas?

Israel the baby killer?
The death of a baby is a tragedy however it comes about. Eight-month old Layla Ghandour was allegedly a victim of Israeli tear gas leading to shocking articles such as the one below in the UK’s Daily Express.


What the Express isn’t telling its readers is that a Gazan doctor told the Associated Press that the baby had a preexisting medical condition and that he did not believe her death was caused by tear gas. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to disclose medical information to the media.

Unaddressed by the Los Angeles Times is why Palestinian parents bring babies (in this case with a heart defect) to a clash where they know tear gas and smoke from burning tires would be in the air. A similar New York Times report shed just a little more light on the question:

Layla was dozing at their home in Gaza City when a call went up: A bus was waiting, outside a nearby mosque, to take residents to the border fence, where the protest was raging. Her 12-year-old uncle, Ammar, bundled her up in his arms and carried her out the door.

The boy assumed that Layla’s mother was already on the bus. In fact, she was in another part of the house, suffering from a toothache. Still, Layla was hardly the only infant at the protest. Entire families had come along, some snacking on ice cream or sandwiches, as the protests raged hundreds of yards away.

A gas libel
As for the headline “Drones Drop Lethal Canisters” as seen in the Express above, this is simply a libel. Tear gas is a recognized form of non-lethal riot control and the IDF was clearly not dropping tear gas in order to kill.

Just as bad was a staff-ed in The Independent that referred to the death of the Palestinian baby:

In this context it is worth reminding ourselves of the worldwide wave of revulsion against chemical weapons we have seen in recent weeks. Palestinian victims deserve the same sympathy and protests as anyone else when their children suffer from gassing.

Drawing an equivalence between Israeli tear gas used as a means of non-lethal riot control and the use of chemical weapons as in Syria is both inaccurate and utterly despicable.

How Hamas encourages the riots
None of the media have asked the most obvious question – why would anyone bring babies or children to a riot in the first place?

A Gazan terrorist was apprehended by the IDF after attempting to infiltrate into Israeli territory. Watch him explaining how Hamas forces civilians to participate in violence against Israel.

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Brett Stephens  writes in the New York Times:

The world now demands that Jerusalem account for every bullet fired at the demonstrators, without offering a single practical alternative for dealing with the crisis.

But where is the outrage that Hamas kept urging Palestinians to move toward the fence, having been amply forewarned by Israel of the mortal risk? Or that protest organizers encouraged women to lead the charges on the fence because, as The Times’s Declan Walsh reported, “Israeli soldiers might be less likely to fire on women”? Or that Palestinian children as young as 7 were dispatched to try to breach the fence? Or that the protests ended after Israel warned Hamas’s leaders, whose preferred hide-outs include Gaza’s hospital, that their own lives were at risk?

Elsewhere in the world, this sort of behavior would be called reckless endangerment. It would be condemned as self-destructive, cowardly and almost bottomlessly cynical.

A “disproportionate” response?
Many media outlets and commentators have noted the difference in casualty figures between Palestinians and Israelis (one IDF soldier has been lightly wounded by shrapnel).

The charge of disproportionate force has been leveled at Israel on numerous occasions, particularly within the contexts of military operations in Gaza in the past.


Financial Times, May 15, 2018
Eric Yoffie responded in Haaretz to the disproportionate charge:

Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times acknowledged in passing possible grounds for blaming Hamas. But she more or less dismissed such claims, and noted “(t)he Israeli military’s disproportionate violence.”

John Cassidy, writing in The New Yorker, used similar language, pointing out that the “the casualty count was hugely asymmetrical.”

Again: Excuse me?

Charges of disproportionality are among the most common leveled against Israel in her long struggle against Hamas, and they are among the most infuriating.

Are Goldberg and Cassidy suggesting that if there were a lot more Israeli dead, and a hundred Jewish bodies were strewn across the desert in southern Israel, then Israel’s action would be acceptable, or at least more readily forgiven? If not directly stated, that is what is implied.

Indeed the term “disproportionate” has has been abused by those who have employed it without bothering to research precisely what it actually means in terms of international law. (Find out more about the concept by clicking here.)

Media complicity?
Some commentators have noted the role that the media have played in Hamas’s PR success.

Matti Friedman in the New York Times:

The press coverage on Monday was a major Hamas success in a war whose battlefield isn’t really Gaza, but the brains of foreign audiences.

Hamas understood that Western news outlets wanted a simple story about villains and victims and would stick to that script, whether because of ideological sympathy, coercion or ignorance. The press could be trusted to present dead human beings not as victims of the terrorist group that controls their lives, or of a tragic confluence of events, but of an unwarranted Israeli slaughter. The willingness of reporters to cooperate with that script gave Hamas the incentive to keep using it.



Liel Leibovitz in Tablet:

That so many of our elites still fall into a cheap propaganda trap set up by a terrorist cult is dispiriting, to say the least. That they further the goals of a terrorist organization by furnishing the backdrop to its macabre and murderous theater is deplorable. But after 2005, and 2009, and 2014, it has become increasingly hard to credit the idea that anyone involved on any side is naive about the nature and consequences of their actions.

What’s truly disturbing about yesterday’s events is the idea that they were theater. In other words, that the press knows exactly what it is doing—that news organizations are knowingly partnering with Hamas, and gladly whitewashing the crimes of a ghoulish leadership in return for pictures that they want as much as Hamas does, and that they are happy to pay for in uncritical coverage and free airtime.

That kind of cynicism, at the expense of Palestinian lives, is truly breathtaking, even for the Middle East. And it makes us all complicit.

Alan Dershowitz in The Hill:

One thing is crystal clear: Hamas will continue to use the ”dead baby strategy” as long as the media continues to report the deaths in the manner in which it has reported them in recent weeks. Many in the media are complicit in these deaths because their one-sided reporting encourages Hamas to send innocent women and children to the front line. Perhaps Israel could do a better job of defending its civilians but it is certain that the media can do a better job of accurately reporting the Hamas strategy that results in so many innocent deaths.

Israel as a moral actor
Debate will rage for some time concerning the actions of both Israelis and Palestinians and plenty of observers on all sides will probably conclude that Hamas, thanks to the body count that it encouraged, has come out on top, at least in the battleground of the media.

Criticism of Israeli policies is legitimate. Indeed, millions of Israeli citizens do just that on a regular basis as is normal in a democracy. Israel’s army should be held to the same standards as other Western militaries such as those of the US and UK.

Where the line has been crossed is efforts by some to demonize Israel as a uniquely evil and malevolent state.

One of the reservists at the scene has written of his experiences in The Times of Israel:

I want to testify that what I saw and heard was a tremendous, supreme effort from our side to prevent, in every possible way, Palestinian deaths and injuries.

Of course, the primary mission was to prevent hundreds of thousands of Gazans from infiltrating into our territory. That kind of invasion would be perilous, mortally dangerous, to the nearby communities; would permit terrorists disguised as civilians to enter our kibbutz and moshav communities, and would leave us with no choice but to target every single infiltrator. That’s why our soldiers were directed to prevent infiltration, in a variety of ways, using live ammunition only as a last resort.

The IDF employs many creative means of reducing friction with Gazans and uses numerous methods, most of which are not made public, to prevent them from reaching the fence. In addition, over the past few weeks there have been serious efforts to save the lives of children and civilians who have been pushed to the front lines by the Hamas, who are trying to hide behind them in order to infiltrate and attack Israel.

When there is no alternative, and live ammunition must be used to stop those who storm the fence, the soldiers make heroic and sometimes dangerous efforts not to kill and to only injure those on the other side.

The media have played a central role in this latest assault on Israel’s legitimate right to defend its borders and its citizens. Will the media climb down from their knee-jerk response now that new information has come to light?

It takes guts to admit you got it wrong but at least one journalist has done just that.

Either way, far too much of the media should hang their heads in shame for the scandalous coverage that has polluted our TV screens, newspapers and online news sites over the past few days.


Please keep an eye on your local media and let us know if you see anything that goes beyond the realms of fair and balanced coverage by clicking on the Red Alert button on this page.

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-15-2018-gaza-israel/
Clashes Paused as Gaza Buries Dead, World Slams Israel
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 15, 2018
Today’s Top Stories
1. Palestinians in Gaza spent the day burying their dead for now. Hamas calls for further marches on the border petered out as a mere 400 Palestinians showed up. Nevertheless, the IDF remained braced for Naqba Day violence to spread to the West Bank.

Shortly before this roundup was published, the IDF announced that 24 of the 60 Palestinians killed were terrorists from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The army also released details about how it prevented a mass border breach.

2. Israel threatens to resume targeted killings of Hamas leaders if riots continue.

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3. Palestinians managed to trash their side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing. It’s the third time they destroyed equipment and infrastructure at the crossing where Israel transfers food, fuel, medicine and humanitarian aid to the Strip. (Who gains? Hamas.)

By the way, Palestinians refused to allow 14 trucks carrying food and diapers to enter Gaza today, the Times of Israel reports. (Medical supplies were allowed through.) The Times notes, “It was not immediately clear why the border officials, who are employed by the Palestinian Authority, would not accept the shipments.”

building campaign

4. Does the Media Really Understand the Gaza Violence? Thanks to the media, Gaza violence was always likely to be a win-win situation for Hamas. HonestReporting addressed a number of issues not raised in this roundup and the critique is must-read.

5. Your No-Hype Guide To The US Embassy Move To Jerusalem: Lost in the media hoopla over the US embassy move is a solid discussion of the law and history shaping this historic moment. HonestReporting’s Daniel Pomerantz explains in The Federalist.

6. Is the US Embassy Move Legal?: Israel must be treated according to the same legal standards as every other country on earth.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli and US officials inaugurated the US embassy in Jerusalem. President Donald Trump addressed the gathering by a video link. Take your pick of Times of Israel or Haaretz coverage. Outside, police clashed with Israeli Arab MKs protesting the move.

• IDF called yesterday’s Palestinian violence unprecedented, as an estimated 35,000-50,000 Gazans clashed with soldiers and tried to breach the border. Military officials told Israeli media that “Hamas deployed 12 separate terror “cells” to try to breach the border at different spots,” and that they were unable to kidnap or kill any soldiers.

• Talk is cheap, but I wondersparking a new intifada in the West Bank was Hamas’ end game all along.

Ynet

• The New York Times and Washington Post both noted this point about the Hamas’ drive for casualties:

But the protests appeared to have a more violent edge than in previous weeks. Some young men brought knives and fence cutters. At a gathering point east of Gaza City, organizers urged protestors over loudspeakers to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them.

• The New York Times snippet on Palestinian injury figures made my antennae twitch:

A spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, Lt. Colonel Jonathan Conricus, cast doubt on the casualty numbers from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry; he said a large number of those listed as injured had suffered only tear-gas inhalation.

That may be true. According to the Health Ministry, live fire accounted for 1,204 injuries, bullet fragments caused 133 injuries and 837 injuries were attributed to gas. The breakdown did not account for the remaining injuries.

• A Palestinian baby died of tear gas inhalation because, well, who doesn’t bring the little ones to violent clashes? [Update: Just after this roundup was published, a Gaza doctor said the baby, Layla Ghandour had a pre-existing medical condition and may not have died because of tear gas]. Associated Press quoted Hamas-affiliated Gaza health officials that six of the Palestinians killed by gunshots were minors. Indeed, this description from a New York Times dispatch says a lot about the gulf between Israeli and Palestinian society:

At the rear of the protest area, Aseel Nasser, a determined 12-year-old girl, stood her ground. Facing a video camera operated by her brother, she recited a poem that extolled the virtues of jihad against Zionists. She was undeterred by the risks, explained her father, Khalil Nassar, 46, an education ministry official, who had brought her along. “It would be a great honor to be martyred by the occupation,” he said.

The Los Angeles Times also noted one family’s unsuccessful efforts to keep their daughter from going to the clashes. But where did Shireen learn to talk like this?

Terrified for their daughter’s safety, Shireen Nusralla’s parents locked her in her room Monday so she would not go to the protests. But the 30-year-old woman said she sneaked out through a window.

“I’m not afraid,” she declared as she walked toward a camp east of Gaza City, carrying a large Palestinian flag. “My dream is to get martyred or to kidnap an Israeli soldier.”

sad earth• International reactions to yesterday:

– At the United Nations, the US blocked a Security Council statement calling for an investigation into the Gaza violence.
– Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador and recalled its ambassador to Israel. South Africa also recalled its ambassador to Israel.
– The US and Australia blamed Hamas for the casualties.
– Mahmoud Abbas lashed out at the US, calling the embassy a “US settlement outpost.”
– In the Hague, the International Criminal Court expressed “grave concern” that both Israel and Hamas may have committed war crimes.
– Ireland dressed down Israel’s ambassador over the border deaths.

• How the heck can CNN interview Gaza march organizer Ahmad Abu Artema and let him pontificate about non-violence, Gandhi and Martin Luther King without ever asking him to explain the slingshots, firebombs, burning kites and other explosives Palestinians have been bringing his to “non-violent” event?

• The politicization of the Eurovision song competition already began when Dublin Lord Mayor Micheal Mac Donncha told Dublin Live that he thinks Ireland should boycott the 2019 contest, which will be held in Israel. Israeli Arab MK Yousef Jabareen made a similar boycott call.

• Spanish court scraps municipality’s boycott of Israel, calling it unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Commentary
• Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai weighs in on the embassy move, also insisting that Israel only has one capital, and it is Jerusalem.

In all my years as mayor, I have made it clear to every distinguished ambassador that we will provide him and his team with the best service to make them feel at home here, but that I am first and foremost an Israeli who is offended by the fact that his country refuses to recognize my country’s capital—Jerusalem—as Israel’s capital city.
What would the Italians say if the State of Israel decided that Milan rather than Rome was the capital of the boot-shaped country and placed its embassy there?

Ron Huldai
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai
• The Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) nailed the first paragraph of its staff-ed.

Violence marred the transfer of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv on Monday, but the ceremony was more excuse than cause. The Palestinians from Hamas who protested along the Gaza border with Israel were continuing their eternal war against the existence of the Jewish state more than they care about where America puts its diplomats.

• Tweet of the day goes to Jonathan Schanzer:
Jonathan Schanzer

@JSchanzer
 Everyone tweeting callous responses to Gaza deaths or spitting venom at Israel for protecting its border should shut it. This is a legitimate crisis, and not one that anyone seems to be able to solve. I dare you to tweet a legit solution not a banality.

4:50 PM - May 14, 2018
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• Plenty of commentary about the embassy move, the latest from Gaza, and the Palestinians

– Avi Issacharoff: For Hamas, dancing on the brink of chaos is a winning tactic
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: View from the Gaza front: Is the IDF acting legally?
– Amos Yadlin: Hamas incites violence to hide its own shortcomings
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Hamas’ march of folly
– Daily Telegraph (staff-ed) There is no Israel-Palestine peace process left for Donald Trump to wreck


@AsherSchechter
21h
That Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah would be sung at an event like this, while dozens are shot and killed only miles away in Gaza, further proves that Hallelujah is the single most abused and misunderstood song in the history of recorded music https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/996024737808646144 …
EyalOfer
@Eyalo365
 Hamas wanted to create a split screen by sending civilians on attack. It worked.

11:41 PM - May 14, 2018
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– Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser: The conflict in Gaza: Three ways to view it
– Yoav Limor: Gaza teeters on the brink
– Sohrab Ahmari: The media war on Palestinian free will
– Raoul Wootliff: Abandoning split screen, Israeli TV tunes out Gaza to bask in US love
– Sen. Joe Lieberman: Why US embassy Jerusalem move happened and why it matters

• Your daily dose of moral equivalence, courtesy Irish Times cartoonist Martyn Turner:

View image on Twitter
Irish Times Opinion

@IrishTimesOpEd
 Here's the latest Martyn Turner https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/martyn-turner-1.3494951?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
12:46 PM - May 15, 2018
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– John Podhoretz: The embassy moves
– Yossi Beilin: Stop the sulking
– New York Post (staff-ed): Israel defends itself against Palestinian attackers from Gaza
– New York Daily News (staff-ed) Terrorists are chiefly to blame for the tragic loss of life in Gaza
– David Horovitz: As America endorses Israel in Jerusalem, Hamas shows it never will
– Eytan Gilboa: Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem: Fixing a historical diplomatic anomaly
– Bassam Tawil: Western taxpayers funding abuse of Palestinians
– Jennifer Rubin: A new US embassy in Jerusalem, but the same old story

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Omar Barghouti, Ben Wedeman, Dana Milbank, Ben White, Michelle Goldberg, Paul Waldman and Rachel Shabi, plus staff-eds in the Irish Times and The Independent. Sheesh . . .

Israeli flag• Last word goes to Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, who argues that Israel’s status in the Mideast is rising because it’s the only country in the region proving capable of confronting Iran:

As long as the US administration entrusts this new role to Israel, and if it is suitable to the Arab parties, it is likely to expand in the future. Israel is a relatively small country, roughly the size of Kuwait, but it has a superior regional military capability. Taking advantage of tensions and the changing situation, it is establishing a new position for itself.
Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND Maria Biblik; globe CC BY-SA John LeGear; Huldai CC BY-NC-SA Hubert Burda Media; Israeli flag CC BY Justin LaBerge;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-14-2018-gaza-march/
Palestinians Trying to Breach Border as US Opens Jerusalem Embassy
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 14, 2018

A composite image of Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border on May 4 and Jerusalem municipality worker hangs an American and Israeli flags near the US consulate in Jerusalem on May 7, 2018. Photos by Wissam Nassar/Flash90 and Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 respectively.
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Today’s Top Stories
1. Palestinians began marching on the Israel-Gaza border hours before a ceremony inaugurating the US embassy in Jerusalem.

According to the latest liveblogs from the Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and i24 News, between 35,000-50,000 Palestinians are rioting along the Israel-Gaza border. Flaming kites managed to start fires in at least five different Israeli fields. Last I looked at the liveblogs, 37 Palestinians were reported killed, including three Hamas operatives trying to plant a bomb along the border fence. The Israeli Air Force also struck five Hamas targets near Jabaliya

The Shin Bet says Iran is funding the chaos. According to a Ministry of Strategic Affairs message seen by HonestReporting, the Palestinians intended to breach the border at 3:30 PM local time. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the West Bank clashed with soldiers near the Qalandiya security barrier and Bethlehem.

Follow the liveblogs as the situation unfolds.

Our strength is grass roots.
Our strength is you
 

2. The inauguration of the US embassy in Jerusalem was underway as this roundup was published with 800 dignitaries from the US, Israel and local diplomatic corps attending. President Donald Trump is scheduled to address the gathering by a video link.


A convoy of Harley Davidson riders arrive to the US Consulate in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood, Israel, May 13, 2018. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
3. The Israeli cabinet approved an NIS 2 billion ($560 million) Jerusalem “sovereignty plan” to strengthen Israeli jurisdiction over eastern Jerusalem. According to the Times of Israel and Haaretz, we’re talking about a contentious land regulation proposal, developing public spaces, business infrastructure and public transportation, encouraging Palestinian schools in the city to use Israeli curriculum, building a cable car from western Jerusalem to the Western Wall and more.

According to the “Land Regulation” proposal, one of the programs authorized by cabinet ministers, Israel will attempt to establish full administrative control over territory in the eastern part of Jerusalem by settling land disputes between Palestinian neighbors and demarcating property boundaries.

Israel currently has no accurate record of land ownership claims in East Jerusalem, the Justice Ministry says, due to it never before forcing Palestinian residents to present certifiable documents of ownership . . .

Critics of the plan, however, say it is a tacit land grab, with the government attempting to establish swaths of land with no proven property claims in order to advance building projects in the eastern part of the city.

building campaign

In the News
• It’s going to take weeks, perhaps months, for Israel to get the Kerem Shalom crossing repaired after Palestinians destroyed fuel lines and other infrastructure on their own side of the crossing. The Times of Israel takes a closer look at why Hamas allowed Gazans to lay waste to a crossing where Israel transfers needed fuel, food, medicine and more to the Strip.

The official said that during the attack on Kerem Shalom, Israeli officials watched as rioters ran back and forth between the crossing and a Hamas position a few hundred meters away.

“Then we saw about 10 Hamas people standing at the gates of Kerem Shalom,” he said.

According to the officer, the Hamas members were wearing civilian clothes but directed the events with walkie-talkies, “giving orders — what to do, where to go.”

• Dr. Mordechai Kedar discussed the embassy move with Sky News.

 

Sky News

@SkyNews
 "History shows Jerusalem was never capital of any Arab or Islamic state" - Israeli scholar Dr Mordechai Kedar defends the controversial US embassy move

11:47 AM - May 14, 2018
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• The Beitar Jerusalem soccer team wants to rename itself “Beitar Trump Jerusalem” in honor of the US embassy move. But the Jerusalem Post notes this qualifier:

Despite Beitar’s announcement to officially change the club’s name, it will require approval from the Israel Football Association, a process which is far from straightforward. In addition, Donald Trump has been a registered trademark in Israel since 2008, and should Beitar try to add it to its name, it may be sued, as it hasn’t received permission to use it.

• Since when did the Irish Times ever acknowledge that Jews have rights to the land of Israel too? This photo caption’s a case in point. The unnamed “Palestinian Jews” shaking hands happen to be David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir.

Irish Times

• Israel’s tough posture in Syria is creating cracks in the Russian-Iranian relationship. The Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) explains:

Now, as Mr. Assad regains control of much of the country, Russia and Iran’s interests have begun to increasingly diverge. In particular, Russian analysts said, Moscow has grown concerned over Iran’s attempt to use Syria as a beachhead to threaten Israel and boost its power over Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories.

• This is just satire.

satire

Around the World
• The student council of Germany’s Heidelburg U. voted to label the BDS movement as antisemitic, meaning “BDS groups and affiliated groups will not be supported with rooms or finances,” reports the Jerusalem Post.

• Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, who previously investigated Labour party antisemitism, has called Ken Livingstone to be expelled from the party. Of the ex-London mayor’s claims that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist, Chakrabarti said it was an “insult” that the party only suspended him.

• Worth reading. As for what the phenomenon of spies hacking journalism means for Israel, all I can say is use your imagination…


Scott Shane

@ScottShaneNYT
 My wrestle with a journalistic dilemma that has disturbed me for a while: When Spies Hack Journalism https://nyti.ms/2GaBNAe 

10:37 PM - May 12, 2018

When Spies Hack Journalism
Reporters usually care little about a source’s motives, provided their information is true and newsworthy. But what if the source is a foreign spy agency?

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Commentary
• Memo to Atef Abu Saif: There was no pre-1948 British policy to actively replace Palestinians with Jews. And Palestinian living conditions improved in the West Bank in 1967 when Israel took over and invested in the territories. If you want to be a human shield for Hamas in not-so-peaceful “protest” that makes a mockery of the two-state solution, I’m not going to pretend to have sympathy for you if you have to face unpleasant consequences later.

flags• Here’s what else I’m reading about the embassy move, Naqba day, Gaza and the Palestinians today . . .

– Col. Richard Kemp: Expected upsurge in Gaza violence
– Jeff Jacoby: The Palestinians’ real ‘nakba’
– Charles Bybelezer: To create better future, Palestinians must overcome destructive past
– Ron Prosor: The day Jerusalem won
– Eugene Kontorovich: America recognizes one Jerusalem (click via Twitter)
– Naftali Bennett: Don’t think the US embassy belongs in Jerusalem? Get over it.
– New York Daily News (staff-ed): Israel’s capital is finally recognized by the US
– The Australian (staff-ed) US embassy move is a breakthrough for Israel
– Yossi Klein Halevi: Israelis and Palestinians need to honor a two-story solution in the Middle East
– Yigal Carmon: Why the peace process failed
– Yael Patir: Most US Jews oppose embassy move
– Charles Moore: Israel at 70 is a better and less corrupt place than almost all of Britain’s former colonies

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

– Seth Frantzman: Iran just overplayed its hand in Syria
– Anshel Pfeffer: Israel doesn’t want war with Iran – it prefers crisis in Tehran
– Moshe Arens: No longer alone facing Iran
– Hillel Frisch: What might an Israel-Iran war look like?
– Konrad Yakabuski: On Israel, Trudeau is Harper’s pupil
– Reuven Brenner: The roots of antisemitism (click via Twitter)
– Golan Yarok: Another LSE lecturer caught lying

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-13-2018-kerem-shalom/
What’s Really Behind Trashing of Kerem Shalom?
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 13, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. For the second consecutive week, Palestinian rioters at the Kerem Shalom border crossing destroyed gas lines and other infrastructure — on the Gaza side of the crossing. The IDF estimated the rioters caused around $9 million in damage forcing Israel to close it until further notice. The destruction sounds senseless until you see what Gaza sources told Ynet about how Hamas benefits from Kerem Shalom’s closure:

A Palestinian source in Gaza, meanwhile, told Ynet that Hamas has been profiteering considerably as a result of the crossing’s destruction. The Kerem Shalom crossing is operated by the Palestinian Crossings Authority, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) rather than Hamas, he noted.

The source then explained that Hamas was encouraging rioters to damage crossings, thereby causing the PA to lose revenue from customs and other taxes levied on incoming goods.

Bringing the goods in through the Rafah border crossing, the source added, will allow Hamas to pocket such tax levies.

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2. Israel destroyed a Hamas terror tunnel which “ran by the Erez pedestrian crossing and was meters away from reaching into Israeli territory” on Saturday night. The tunnel is the ninth destroyed by the IDF since the end of October.

building campaign

3. Israeli singer Netta Barzilai won the Eurovision song competition, meaning Israel will host the contest next year. The 25-year-old Barzilai’s female-empowerment song, Toy, was long among the top favorites to win, having racked up some 28 million views on YouTube. Winners are determined by a combination of international viewer votes and a jury.

The Times of Israel is already assessing how much Israel will have to spend on that. Israel hasn’t won the Eurovision competition since 1998 when Dana International took the top prize. See commentaries by David Horovitz and Eran Suissa.

Congratulations to Netta from the HonestReporting staff!

Eurovision HR staff

Israel and the Palestinians
• Weekly clashes along the Gaza border continued on Friday with flaming kites sparking fires, grenades, burning tires and rock throwing. Two Palestinians were killed. Friday marked the first appearance of a kite-cutting drone, which Israeli media reports say has already downed 40 kites.
View image on Twitter

Adam Milstein

@AdamMilstein
 #Israel using small remote-controlled airplanes to combat #Hamas #Gaza Attack Kites. Developed by the Defense Ministry, IDF uses drones to cut wires holding the kites together, in order to prevent them from reaching Israeli fields and setting them ablaze https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-using-model-airplanes-to-combat-gazas-attack-kites/ …

8:00 PM - May 12, 2018
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• To learn more about the army’s rules of engagement, Haaretz visited IDF snipers working along the Gaza border. The money quote:

From a second visit to the area in recent weeks and a series of discussions with commanders and soldiers, no sense can be discerned that snipers are trigger-happy, as some statements from the left wing have it.

USA• Tomorrow is the ceremony marking the formal move of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. With the assistance of Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic, Israel was able to thwart a European Union condemnation of the US embassy move, according to Israeli media reports.

• See Haaretz for a nice “what you need to know” roundup about tomorrow’s embassy move. Security for the event has been three months in the making. Meanwhile, the New York Times explains why Ambassador David Friedman plans to continue splitting his time between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv even after the transfer:

That solution might be practical, given that there is little spare space in the Jerusalem building, and most of the embassy staff will be remaining in the Tel Aviv branch of the embassy for the time being. But it may also help get around any diplomatic awkwardness, allowing the ambassador, David M. Friedman, to continue to host officials whose countries oppose the American embassy move.

Iranian Threat
• If conflict with Iran escalates, how would the Israel economy fare? Calcalist crunched a lot of numbers.

Protracted military engagement would undoubtedly be harmful to Israel’s economic activity, but financial indicators, such as foreign exchange rates, suggest the country is perhaps better prepared than it has ever been for to weather a conflict.

• AFP assesses Russian efforts to mediate between Israel and Iran.

• The sign of the times (part 1) isn’t that Bahrain backed Israel’s strikes on Iranian positions in Syria. It’s that Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa A) said so publicly B) in Arabic C) on Twitter.

Cafe Milano• Sign of the times (part 2): The Associated Press learned of some impromptu “dinner diplomacy” that took place in March.

The UAE and Qatari ambassadors to the US were in Washington’s Cafe Milano along with a State Dept. official and some journalists when they discovered Benjamin Netanyahu was coincidentally also dining there and passed along a message to the PM asking if he’d join them:

It wasn’t long before Netanyahu and his wife came over to say hello on their way out. They lingered, answering a few questions from the group about Iran and other issues. There were smiles, a few laughs about the oddity of the situation, and Netanyahu shook hands with the two ambassadors before leaving the restaurant . . .

In and of itself, the interaction does not signal any historic establishment of ties between Israel and the UAE or any other country. Yet it casts light on how friendly cooperation between the Jewish state and the Arab Gulf nations, until recently kept behind the scenes, are creeping into public view.

• Sign of the times (part 3): Coverage of Israeli strike in Arab media reflects divisions.

• Russia, after Netanyahu visit, backs off Syria S-300 missile supplies, Reuters reports.

• Ynet: The real target of last month’s T-4 attack: an Iranian-made aerial defense system called “The Third Khordad.”

Once the system was unloaded off of an Iranian transport plane on the Syrian T-4 base, it was destroyed before even being unpacked.

The 3rd Khordad system, developed and manufactured by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s military industries, was seemingly a copy of the aforementioned Russian S-300—a system capable of intercepting not only planes but also missiles, rockets, cruise missiles and drones deep within Israeli territory.

Third Khordad
A demonstration of Iran’s Third Khordad aerial defense system in 2014.
• According to an Arab media report picked up by Haaretz, Russia gave Iran advance warning of Israel’s plans to attack Iranian positions in Syria.

• While Israel has offered humanitarian aid to civilians of southern Syria, I don’t know of any Israeli-aligned “proxies” that would be the equivalent of Iran’s string-pulling relationship with Hezbollah. Where did AP get this line from?

The two rivals have long fought each other through proxies, and with the new exchange each seemed to be sending a warning that a direct clash between them could swiftly escalate.

• Netanyahu’s spokesman, David Keyes discussed the Iranian threat with Channel 4‘s Jon Snow.

Around the World
Germany• Executives from the German Bank for Social Economy may be included in the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s top 10 list of antisemitic activity, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Critics say the Cologne-based BFS is a hotbed of BDS activity. The bank maintains at least four accounts that directly or indirectly aid the BDS campaign to undermine and dismantle the existence of Israel.

• Amsterdam kosher eatery’s owner will close shop unless police curb antisemitic vandalism

• Following a fatal stabbing in Paris, a Jewish lawmaker says France is suffering an “intifada.”

Commentary
• US envoy Jason Greenblatt got Jerusalem Post op-ed space to denounce Hamas for failing its own people and taking Gaza back to the Stone Age.

Jerusalem• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend about the embassy move, Jerusalem and the Palestinians this weekend . . .

– Gilad Erdan: How Trump’s Jerusalem embassy decision could lead to peace for Israel
– Josefin Dolsten: Why these Latin American countries support moving their embassies to Jerusalem
– Aaron David Miller: Five myths about the US embassy move to Jerusalem
– Abigail Shrier: Trump’s Jerusalem stand
– David Harris: May 14, 2018, a historic day
– Avi Issacharoff: It’s make-or-break time for Hamas in Gaza
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Gazans are victims of an ideology of hatred
– Alex Traiman: Jerusalem is rising as Israel’s enemies falter
– Michael Goodwin: Getting a grip on Israel’s future
– Alan Baker: Did the Palestinians ever really recognize Israel?
– Alex Ryvchin: Arab leaders, not Britain, to blame for Palestinian plight

Iran• Here’s what else I’m reading about tensions with Iran . . .

– Raphael Ahren: Despite global vows of support, Israel stands alone against Iran in Syria
– National Post (staff-ed): Israel is left to contain the Iranian threat that Obama ignored
– Abdulrahman Al-Rashed: Which side are you on? Iran or Israel?
– Julie Lenarz: Why we must stand with Trump and Israel to stop Iran from creating a Shiite empire
– Amos Harel: Iran’s entrenchment in Syria set back months after most extensive Israeli strikes in decades
– Jonathan Spyer: Under fire but unfazed, Israel plays the waiting game with Iran
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Israel, Iran walking on the precipice
– David Horovitz: Israel has the upper hand over Iran in Syria, but the ayatollahs won’t give up
– Michael Oren: Trump made the right choice on Iran
– Herb Keinon: Putin stops neither Iran nor Israel in Syria
– Jack Goldsmith: How legally binding is the Iranian nuclear deal?
– Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror: Don’t ease up
– Seth Frantzman: Putin is now key to restraining Iran in Syria
– Anshel Pfeffer: Putin gives Israel a free hand against Iran, but he may soon have to pick a side
– Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Iran is in trouble
– Melanie Phillips: The elephant in the room is regime change
– Prof. Shmuel Sandler: Mideast peace will come through containment of Iranian threat
– Vivian Bercovici: The vanity and art of the deal

Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND J McDowell; US flag CC BY-NC-ND Bill Dickinson; Third Khordad via YouTube/armyreco; German flag CC BY-SA Emanuele; Iranian bomb CC0 Pixabay;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-10-2018-iran-attacks-israel-responds/
Israel Destroys Iranian Positions in Syria Overnight
BY DANIEL POMERANTZ  MAY 10, 2018
Today’s Top Stories
1. The IDF announced that Iran’s Quds Force fired 20 rockets at Israel last night. Some were shot down by Israel’s missile defense technology, and no injuries were reported. In response, Israel launched attacks on dozens of Iranian targets in Syria, including intelligence centers, weapons depots, anti-aircraft networks, and more. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman announced that Israel, “hit almost all Iranian infrastructure in Syria.” This is a departure from Israel’s usual policy of being ambiguous as to whether it was responsible for attacks. More on the night’s events below.
 
View image on Twitter
 
Israeli Air Force
@IAFsite
 The IDF has struck dozens of Iranian military targets in Syria in response to the Iranian rocket attack against Israel. Quds force is behind attack and has played the initial price. IDF remains ready for various scenarios but does not seek to escalate the situation
 
5:30 AM - May 10, 2018
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2. Continuing fallout from President Trump’s announcement that  the United States will withdraw from the JCPOA, (the Iran nuclear deal).  There was a predominantly negative EU reaction , but journalists rarely mention that Europe purchases over one million barrels of oil per day from Iran, raising a possible conflict of interest. There were primarily supportive American Jewish  reactions via LA Times, and mostly supportive Israeli view in the Times of Israel.
 
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3. Will European countries boycott the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem? Some reports say yes, but Israel’s Foreign Ministry says it has not heard of any such decision. Either way, we’ll find out on Monday, May 14. Watch this space for more as events unfold.
 
4. IDF’s Defense of the Gaza Border:  What’s the Truth?  Will 100,000 Palestinians breach Israel’s border on Tuesday?  Will there be violence and will Israel be condemned? HonestReporting helps you prepare for the conversation.
 
Iran and Syria
• Secretary of State Pompeo : We will work with our allies to find a lasting solution to the Iranian threat.
 
• Amid Iranian missile barrage, US says Israel has right to defend itself.
 
• After Putin meet, PM indicates Moscow won’t curtail Israeli strikes in Syria.
 
• Will recent events on the Syrian border lead to war with Iran? Israel’s former national security adviser Yaakov Nagel doesn’t think so:
 
No one wants a war. Usually wars happen because of misunderstandings, because people are talking about war too much [but] Iranians know full well Israel’s capabilities, and its willingness to defend itself.
 
• Iranian Lawmakers Shout “Death to America,” Set U.S. Flag Ablaze at Parliament – Nasser Karimi
 
• Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, is caught between Syrian forces and Islamic State as battles continue.
building campaign
 
Window into Israel
• Despite a rash of scandals involving the Israeli PM, his Likud party continues doing well in the polls, at least to some extent due to Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA.:
 
The poll found that if an election were held now, Netanyahu’s Likud party would rise from its current 30 Knesset seats to 35…When the poll asked respondents whether they supported canceling the Iran deal, 62% said yes, 17% said no, and the rest did not offer an opinion
 
• What is the “Supreme Court override bill” and why do Israelis care? JPost’s  Lahav Harkov weighs in.
 
• Israel continues to negotiate with the UN on a plan for African migrants. HonestReporting previously explained the overall situation in this post.
 
Around the World
• Sussex U. students renew commitment to boycott Israel.
 
• A Dutch mosque says it converted a Holocaust survivor to Islam. Local Jews are skeptical.
• Stony Brook University’s  Muslim chaplain under fire from pro-Palestinian students for defending campus Hillel.
 
• German police caught the 89-year-old “Nazi Grandma,” Ursula Haverbeck, after she failed to report to jail to begin a two-year sentence for Holocaust denial and incitement.
 
• Fourteen Boston-area students accused of vandalizing a high school with swastikas and anti-gay slurs.
 
Commentary
• David Horowitz: Problems are mounting for Iran, which may make it particularly dangerous.
 
• Allister Heath: The Iran deal was a monument to Western myopia and groupthink. Good riddance.
 
• Con Coughlin: Iran’s aggression, not Donald Trump’s, has sundered the nuclear deal.
 
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
 
– Avi Issacharoff: Airstrikes are a setback, but Iran fully intends to cement its presence in Syria
– Eli Lake: Trump is now free to fight for Iranian freedom
– Jonathan Tobin: Wrong man, right decision
– Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: The best path to peace
– Rafael Medoff: Columbia U. vs. the Jews, again
– Dr. Reuven Berko: Hamas and the Trump Effect

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-09-2018-quit-iran/
US Quits Iran Nuclear Deal — Now What?
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 9, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. Trump announced the US is withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal and reinstating sanctions.

Israel and the Gulf states were happy. Europe expressed its regrets. Iran denounced the move but said it will keep the JCPOA and move forward by negotiating with Russia, China and Europe.

Trump emphasized that sanctions would also apply to other nations that did business with Iran, meaning that the United States could very well apply sanctions on its closest European allies. “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail,” Trump said.

However, officials said European companies would have several months to pull out of the Iranian market.

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2. The Syrian situation got hotter as another military based was struck, presumably by Israel. Fifteen people, including eight Iranians, were said to be killed. The IDF noted unusual movements of Iranian forces in Syria, and believed they were preparing an imminent reprisal for last month’s strike on the T4 air base. Arab media reports picked up Ynet said missiles intended to be fired at Israel were destroyed:

Yedioth Ahronoth military correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai added that it could be gleaned from the Syrian report of an Israeli attack on a base used by Iranian militias that Iranians have been trying to launch missiles or rockets at Israel in the past few days.

Israel has foiled these attempts, Ben-Yishai opined, both by using the media and — reportedly — by launching a preventative attack. It could also be surmised that the targets of Tuesday’s attack were missile silos and rocket launchers the Iranians took out of hiding and intended to use—prompting Israel to attack once it discovered it.

More at Haaretz and the Times of Israel, plus Amos Harel‘s take.

building campaign

3. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin. The primary agenda item, says Haaretz, is maintaining military coordination over Syria. See also The Media Line, which points out that with the US pulling out of the nuclear accord, Putin is poised to broker an understanding between Jerusalem and Tehran over Syria.

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Raphael Ahren

@RaphaelAhren
 BREAKING: In Moscow's Red Square, PM @Netanyahu watches as Russia's military parades the S-400 anti-missile batteries (which could be deployed to Syria soon defend Assad)

8:59 AM - May 9, 2018
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4. BBC Whitewashes HR’s Jeremy Bowen Complaint: The BBC went for the one person guaranteed to provide entertainment and controversy rather than sober analysis, then tried to quietly cover it all up with after-the-fact revisions and lame response to a formal complaint.

5. Which West Bank? Unraveling an unusual reader alert.

Iranian Threat
• State comptroller: “Communities on Israel’s borders are at risk of being infiltrated by terrorists due to the failure of the Defense Ministry and IDF to properly fund, coordinate and plan a proper security system.” As tensions with Syria mount, the army told northern residents not to disrupt their daily routines.

Meanwhile, the US warned government employees not to go to the Golan without prior approval.

• AP finally discovers the “two Jews, three opinions” phenomenon . . .

Netanyahu opposition to Iran deal not shared by all Israelis

Israel and the Palestinians
save the date• Further cluttering my calendar, the Palestinians announced that the day the US moves its embassy to Jerusalem — Monday, May 14 — will be a “day of rage.” It makes for an already busy week:

›› Sun. May 13 is Jerusalem Day, featuring plenty of events commemorating the anniversary on the Hebrew calendar of the city’s reunification during the Six Day War.
›› Mon. May 15 Is Israel’s Independence Day (according to the Gregorian calendar) and when Palestinians mark their “Naqba Day.” Hamas plans a mass march on the Israel-Gaza border and . further marches on Israeli checkpoints and borders in the West Bank and from Lebanon and Jordan are also called for, though the PA, Jordan, Egypt and Israel are working together to prevent violence.
›› Tue. May 16, Guatemala moves its embassy to Jerusalem.

• Human Rights Watch is going to court to prevent Israel from expelling its Israel-Palestine director. The Interior Ministry revoked Omar Shakir’s work permit and gave him 14 days to leave saying he supports the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Shakir, a US citizen of Iraqi descent, denies ties to BDS and says Israel is trying to muzzle HRW.

• Settler gets 15 years in prison for killing Palestinian, 13 years later. Yehoshua Elitzur was convicted of manslaughter in 2005 for shooting Sael Jabara al-Shatiya on a West Bank road, but fled Israel before he could be sentenced. Elitzur was arrested in Brazil which extradited him this past January. More at Ynet.

Commentary
atom• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels weighing on the Iranian situation . . .

– David Horovitz: Trump’s Iran deal withdrawal: It should never have come to this
– Hugh Hewitt: The Netanyahu moment
– Ron Kampeas: After pulling out of the Iran deal, Trump is open to Plan B — but no one knows what that is
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: Is the Iran nuclear deal dead, or only wounded?
– Raphael Ahren: In nixing nuclear deal, Trump vindicates Netanyahu — for now
– Seth Frantzman: How does Iran keep getting away with it?
– Bret Stephens: A courageous Trump call on a lousy Iran deal
– Jennifer Rubin: 5 big consequences of Trump’s Iran blunder
– Susan Rice: Trump’s most foolish decision yet
– Jonathan Schanzer: Why Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, and what could happen next
– Benny Avni: Keep killing off Obama’s foreign policy, Mr. President

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-07-2018-iran-retaliation/
Israel Braces for Iranian Reprisal Attack
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 7, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel is bracing for an Iranian missile attack from Syria in retaliation for last month’s strike on the T4 military base. Haaretz explains:

Israel’s assessment is that Iran seeks to settle its open account with Israel, but wants to do so without sparking a war. One possible solution to this dilemma is trying to fire a limited barrage at military targets in northern Israel.

Over the past few days, military officials have briefed mayors nationwide about the latest developments.

The decision to publish this information in the media is presumably meant to deter Iran and Hezbollah from carrying out their plans.

For more, take your pick of Jerusalem Post or Times of Israel coverage, plus Ron Ben-Yishai‘s take.

Netta Barzilai
2. BDS is targeting Israeli singer Netta Barzilai with a campaign calling on Eurovision judges and viewers to give her “zero points” in the international singing competition. Netta, who sings “Toy,” is favored to win the Saturday night final. Could BDS actually sabotage her chances?
The Eurovision’s scoring system is based on an equal number of points awarded by judges and the contest’s viewers from across the continent and participating countries.

The BDS campaign’s efforts may thus prove successful in significantly hampering the Israeli’s chances of winning—or even making it to the final.

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3. According to unofficial results from yesterday’s Lebanese elections, Hezbollah and its allies secured a majority of parliamentary seats. However, because of a multi-ethnic power-sharing agreement, the prime minister must be Sunni, and the Sunni with the most votes was the incumbent, the Saudi-backed PM Saad Hariri, even though his Future Movement actually lost seats. It was Lebanon’s first national election in nine years.

Reuters picked up on one Israeli cabinet minister Twitter response saying that “Hezbollah=Lebanon.”

One “candidate” noted by the Associated Press was a Palestinian refugee. Manal Kortam ran a symbolic campaign to draw attention to the 174,000 disenfranchised Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who have no voting rights and face many job restrictions.

building campaign

Israel and the Palestinians
• Is Hamas interested in negotiating a long-term truce with Israel? “According to intelligence assessments, the organization is still in dire distress and is currently more open to discussing options it rejected in the past.”

• The IDF said it killed three Palestinians trying to infiltrate Israel from Gaza to carry out an attack. They were found an ax, lighter fluid, a lighter, a bolt cutter and a GoPro camera. The army didn’t comment on whether a fourth Palestinian in the group was apprehended or fled back to Gaza.

• According to Ministry of Defense estimates, the Palestinian Authority will pay Palestinian terrorists who killed Israelis in recent attacks almost $2.8 million each over their lifetimes. The assessment was disclosed during a Knesset discussion on cutting payments to the PA until the stipends for terrorists and their families are halted. Times of Israel coverage.

The bill to be voted on Monday would allow the government to either permanently deduct the funds paid out to terrorists, or “freeze” the payments, leaving the security cabinet with the final say.

• Ahead of next week’s inauguration of the US embassy in Jerusalem, the PA is urging foreign dignitaries to boycott the event. Meanwhile, US embassy road signs went up in the Kiryat Moriya neighborhood where the building currently called a consulate is located. Further underscoring the relocation, the embassy’s Twitter handle changed from @usembassyTLV to @usembassyjlm.

Also, plans for the new building, which is expected to take six years to build, were released. More on that at Ynet.

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Joshua Davidovich
@JMDavido
 Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat displaying both a new sign for the not-yet-existent US embassy in Jerusalem AND how not to use a ladder safely.

9:20 AM - May 7, 2018
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• Outcry as UAE, Bahrain send cycling teams to race in Israel.

• Israel’s reaching out to Iraqis on Facebook with a “digital embassy.”

• Worth watching: Pierre Rehov unpacks what’s really happening with the Gaza clashes “Behind the Smoke Screen.”

Window into Israel
• Israeli company sold in staggering $7.1 billion deal. Haifa-based Frutarom, an ingredient and flavor-producer, will be acquired by the New York-based International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. “The deal represents the second largest sale or “exit” of an Israeli company to date, only surpassed by Intel’s purchase of Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017.”

• For commentary on the domestic scene, Yonah Jeremy Bob weighs in on the Supreme Court override bill.

Around the World
• An Uber driver who ordered an Israeli diplomat to leave his vehicle in the middle of Chicago traffic for speaking Hebrew has been barred from the ride-sharing service.

• An 89-year-old neo-Nazi is on the run from justice after failing to show up to begin a prison term. A German court sentenced Ursula Haverbeck to two years for incitement. She has been previously convicted of Holocaust denial.

• Student groups at California Polytechnic State University called for an increase in funding for all clubs — except for the “Zionist” ones.

Commentary
• When three pro-Palestinian activists got op-ed space in the San Antonio Express-News, editors followed up by giving opportunities to reply to local activist Eleanor Siegal and Israeli Consul General Gilad Katz.

Alamo
The Alamo in San Antonio
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Naftali Bennett: Hezbollah is Lebanon is Hezbollah
– Emily Landau: Why does Europe still have faith in Iran, a serial nuclear cheat and liar?
– Tzachi Hanegbi: The JCPOA is fatally flawed
– Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror: The depth of Iran’s deception
– YJ Fischer: Trump is going easy on Iran
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Don’t threaten us with war
– Boston Globe (staff-ed): Scuttling the Iran deal would be a costly error
– Charles Bybelezer: No free lunch: Israel bracing to ‘pay price’ for US embassy move
– Jack Rosen: Treat BDS as the campus scourge it is: The push to vilify Israel too often feeds anti-Semitic rhetoric and conduct

Featured image: CC BY Lucy Fisher; Netta via YouTube/Eurovision Song Contest; Alamo CC BY Nan Palermo;

Trump to Announce Iran Nuke Deal Decision Today
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 8, 2018
http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-08-2018-trump-iran/
Today’s Top Stories
1. As this roundup went to press, President Donald Trump was due to announce his policy on the Iranian nuclear accord today. He faces a May 12 deadline on whether the US should remain in the agreement.

2. It’s official: Paraguay became the third country to plan embassy move to Jerusalem. In the coming days, the US and then Guatemala will open embassies in the Israeli capital.

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3. First the Palestinians weaponized kites, now they’ve weaponized helium balloons. Just attach a lit-Molotov cocktail and send it off. Ynet and Israel HaYom describe the hundreds of thousands of shekels damage they caused yesterday:

One balloon landed near Kibbutz Mefalsim in the Shaar HaNegev Regional Council, setting a wheat field ablaze.

Another caused a fire in the Be’eri Forest in the Eshkol Regional Council.

building campaign

Iranian Threat
• “Opposition forces in southern Syria arrested a number of suspected Hezbollah members in the past week, including one man who said he was awaiting orders to fire rockets at Israel, a rebel commander told The Times of Israel late Sunday night.”

Cyprus• Cypriot President: Iranian threat to Israel is also a threat to Cyprus. President Nicos Anastasiades’ comments to i24 News come ahead of trilateral summit with Netanyahu and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday.

• The Jerusalem Post visited northern Israeli communities to gauge the mood of the people.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Hamas denied yesterday’s Haaretz report that it was willing to negotiate a long-term truce with Israel.

• Square near US embassy in Jerusalem to be named for Donald Trump.

• A Knesset bill to deduct terror funds from PA cleared its first legislative hurdle. Ynet coverage.

The deducted money, according to the bill proposal, would be put in a special fund created for this purpose and used—subject to approval from the defense minister—to carry out Israeli court verdicts against the PA or against terrorists; to pay compensation to terror victims; and to carry out projects as part the fight against terrorism and the funding of terrorism.

money

• After completing nine months of a 14-month sentence, Hebron shooter Elor Azaria was released from jail today.

Azaria was convicted of manslaughter for shooting a Palestinian, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif as he lay prone on the ground minutes after he had been neutralized by soldiers Sharif had attacked with a knife. Azaria’s trial polarized the country for weeks.

• According to the UN, some 7,000 Palestinian refugees have been displaced by a Syrian army offensive on the Yarmouk refugee camp. I haven’t seen any meaningful coverage for days.

Around the World
• The UK Labour party expelled a hard-left ‘revolutionary’ who sent a letter to several news services falsely claiming to have been signed by 33 Barnet Labour members supporting Jeremy Corbyn’s record on antisemitism.


Stephen Pollard

@stephenpollard
 Corbyn visited Barnet last Tuesday. Didn't meet a single Labour candidate, didn't campaign for them - but did meet man expelled from Labour hours laterhttps://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/hard-left-revolutionary-who-met-jeremy-corbyn-in-barnet-ahead-of-local-elections-is-expelled-by-labour-party-1.463689 …

11:27 AM - May 8, 2018

Hard-left 'revolutionary' who met Jeremy Corbyn in Barnet ahead of local elections is expelled by...
Fred Leplat - who sent a letter which falsely claimed to have been signed by 33 Barnet Labour members to the JC supporting Mr Corbyn's record on antisemitism - has been expelled by Labour

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• Police escort required for Israeli speakers after protesters disrupted their appearance at U. California, Irvine.

• Durham BDS activists employed by local synagogues, federation.

• Poland’s Holocaust law has triggered a tide of abuse against the Auschwitz museum.

A key claim of the campaign against the museum is that it has been training the site’s official guides to promote “foreign narratives” that are considered by many nationalists and government supporters to be inherently hostile to the Polish point of view.

• Ynet: The Giro d’Italia bicycle race moved on to Sicily, where pro-Palestinian protesters denounced the participation of an Israeli cycling team and tried to block the road.

Commentary
US Israel• Ahead of Israel’s 70th anniversary (according to the English calendar), retired US admiral James Stavridis and Michael Makovsky argue that the US should wish the Jewish state a happy birthday by simply raising Israel’s intelligence clearance, speeding up promised aid and encouraging a higher level Israeli-Arab security cooperation.

By ensuring that Israel can defend itself and facilitating tacit cooperation between Israel and our Sunni Arab partners, the U.S. can bolster the anti-Iranian coalition, lay the foundation for a more stable Middle East and restore its regional leadership — all without putting significant numbers of American boots on the ground.

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

– Anshel Pfeffer: From doomsday to delay: 5 scenarios ahead of Trump’s decision on the Iran nuclear deal
– Avi Issacharoff: Few options for Tehran as it plots revenge on Israel
– Amos Harel: Iran seeks revenge on Israel without claiming responsibility – taking a page from Israel’s playbook
– Seth Frantzman: Iran’s missile threat and Israel’s message to Russia and Assad
– Yoav Zitun: IDF bases prepare for possible Iranian strike
– Yigal Carmon, A. Savyon: Tehran lied about a fatwa banning nuclear weapons
– Wall St. Journal (staff-ed): Iran wins in Lebanon (click via Twitter)
– Nadav Shragai: The US embassy prepares to move to Jerusalem
– Micky Aharonson: Why Russia recognizes Hamas, and other contradictions of its Israel policy
– Andrew Baker: To fight antisemitism, first you have to define it
– Jonathan Tobin: The new anti-Semites promote a very modern ‘blood libel’
– Elizabeth Tsurkov: The Left only cares about Palestinians when it can blame Israel
– Adam Langleben: Labour has betrayed Jewish voters — Corbyn must take action now

Featured image: CC BY David McDermott; Cyprus CC0 Pixabay; money CC BY Images Money;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-06-2018-kites-retaliation/
Israeli Air Force Retaliates for Gaza’s Flaming Kites
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 6, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. Palestinians launched more flaming kites at Israel on Friday. The kites did little damage this weekend (the winds blew them back over Gaza). However, the IDF retaliated for the first time by striking a Hamas position on Sunday morning which military officials said was being used as a launching pad for the kites.


Alex Ryvchin

@AlexRyvchin
 Hell of a progressive movement they have there. “We are waiting for the wind to pick up so we can fly tens of kites and burn their crops,” - https://nyti.ms/2HPnMOb  #gaza

11:50 AM - May 6, 2018
The direction of the wind not only thwarted the kites, but also blew copious amounts of Israeli tear gas and smoke from the burning tires toward the protesters, chasing many away.
Wind Thwarts Plan to Send Flaming Kites From Gaza Into Israel
There were fewer protesters and lower casualties on Friday along the Gaza border, and the plan to fly kites carrying incendiary devices failed when the wind shifted.

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2. Palestinian youths at the Kerem Shalom set Gaza’s own gas line on fire at weekly fence protests. The IDF said the Palestinians didn’t cross over to the Israeli side and destroyed their own fuel supply infrastructure.

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3. According to Israeli media reports, “Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are pumping a quarter of a billion dollars into the Islamic Waqf and a slew of Muslim organizations in East Jerusalem.”

The three countries are describing the move as an act of “rescue” to finance renovations at holy sites, but Israeli officials fear their involvement will go beyond money and could spark violence in the run-up to the ribbon-cutting on May 14, the TV report said.

building campaign

Iranian Nukes
• According to Israeli media reports, intelligence officials from France, Germany and Britain have visited Israel to see the nuclear documents Israel stole from Iran.

• Netanyahu and Putin to meet in Moscow on May 9, ahead of Trump’s May 12 deadline for quitting the Iranian nuclear deal.

• A number of papers picked up on a Boston Globe scoop that former secretary of state John Kerry is quietly engaging in “shadow diplomacy” with Iranian and European officials to preserve the nuclear accord.

• Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer discussed the Iranian nuclear revelations with CBS News.



Israel and the Palestinians
• Palestinian clashes along the Gaza border continued on Friday. Some 10,000 Gazans showed up, with riots breaking out at five different border locations. Soldiers had to respond to the usual burning kites, attempts to breach the fence, burning tires, etc.

• In new videos, IDF accuses Gazans of faking injuries, taking small kids to riots.

 

IDF

@IDFSpokesperson
 Throughout Hamas’s activity, fake injuries and the exploitation of women and children are rampant. This was all intended to disguise terror activity, including hurling explosives & grenades, attempted infiltrations, & burning Israeli land

6:16 PM - May 5, 2018
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• Al Jazeezra footage shows a group of around 15 Gazans breaching the border and running around in Israeli territory celebrating before being chased back into the Strip. Background at the Times of Israel.

• At least six Palestinians reported killed as a large explosion rocked central Gaza on Saturday. Palestinian media reports described the blast as a “work accident.”

• US officials are denying reports that the Trump peace plan will call for Israel to transfer four eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods to the Palestinian Authority

• Amid furor over his antisemitic speech, Mahmoud Abbas was re-elected as the top leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Abbas apologized, which gave the UN an excuse to not condemn the PA leader.

• Israel withdrew its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.

Interpol• The Algemeiner picked up on a report about PA membership in Interpol — the organization which facilitates cooperation among international police in areas such as counter-terror, organized crime, and cyber-crime.

Findings include A) a trend among autocracies to use Interpol to harass political opponents abroad, B) the Palestinian Authority sought Interpol membership as part of a political war against Israel, and C) the US and its allies should oppose PA membership until it reaches a peace agreement with Israel.

• Two leading US human rights activists refused entry to Israel, one for BDS ties.

• Tunisia bid for 2022 Youth Olympics frozen over ban on Israeli athletes.

Window Into Israel
flags• The Knesset may give Israel’s rabbinical courts the power to punish non-Israeli Jews who refuse to grant a divorce to their wives. Haaretz explains:

The bill would allow these courts to prevent non-citizens in these circumstances from leaving Israel after a visit, or even to jail them. Such steps against foreign nationals are thought to be unprecedented.

• A Knesset committee advanced the Supreme Court override bill this afternoon. The bill — which would allow lawmakers to pass legislation struck down by the High Court with a simple majority of 61 MKS — is expected to be voted on by the full Knesset on Wednesday.

• PM removes Facebook post claiming Arab soccer fans celebrated hikers’ deaths.

• In Israel’s latest corruption case, several Beit Shemesh municipal officials were arrested on accusations of “receiving valuable kickbacks from business people in return for advancing their interests by allowing them to purchase city land for development.”

Around the World
• Ahead of today’s Lebanese national elections, the Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) reports that Hezbollah is facing serious discontent. More than 1,200 Hezbollah personnel have been killed fighting in Syria since 2012, and 28 percent of the casualties are from the organization’s Bekaa Valley heartland.

• Hezbollah ‘settlers’ are changing Syria’s demography under Iranian direction. See Memri and The Algemeiner.

Jeremy Corbyn
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
• Local council elections were held all over the UK. While the overall numbers didn’t change too much in terms of Labour vs. Conservative success, one outcome drew a lot of attention. Barnet, the London borough with Britain’s largest concentration of Jews, voted overwhelmingly for the Tories. Barry Rawlings, the leader of the Barnet Labour group, summed it up in a frank op-ed published in The Guardian:

I will always believe that if the evidence of antisemitism in the party had been dealt with as it should have been over the last two years, Barnet would have a Labour council this weekend.

What happened instead was an election day phenomenon that I never want to experience again. Jewish residents voted in protest against Labour. In Golders Green, which has a large Jewish population, turnout was above 70% compared with below 40% in other polling districts. Non-Jewish residents voted against us in solidarity with their Jewish friends, neighbours and loved ones. We are a community, after all. Hundreds of our own supporters, even members, told us that this time they couldn’t bring themselves to vote Labour.

It is agonisingly difficult to describe the feeling of standing as a Labour candidate in a political environment that has turned toxic.

• As if further confirmation was needed about Labour’s antisemitism problem, former London mayor Ken Livingstone tried to defend Labour’s flop – by claiming Hitler collaborated with Jews. “Inside simply 10 seconds of an interview this morning the disgraced ex-London Mayor insisted that anti-Semitic allegations towards him had been a “smear” and that the Nazi dictator HAD “collaborated” with Zionists within the 1930s.” Watch the full interview on Sky News and draw your own conclusions.



• Uber suspended a Chicago driver accused of kicking an Israeli diplomat out of his car for simply speaking Hebrew. The ridesharing organization came under scrutiny after Itay Milner, deputy consul general of Israel to the Midwest described Thursday night’s incident on Facebook.

• Germany‘s antisemitism czar supports banning banks and financial institutions that support or enable BDS.

• Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories roil Washington D.C. city council, “seemingly getting worse with every public attempt to ease the tensions,” the Associated Press reports.

• Wait, what?

Dutch cop cites Israel in asking removal of Holocaust memorial sign

Commentary/Analysis
• When a New York Times staff-ed says Mahmoud Abbas’ antisemitism makes him an unfit partner for peace, you know something fundamental is shifting.

• Avner Yona, a farmer living in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, near the Israel-Gaza Strip border, weighs in on the Gaza terror kites and their impact.

• Hmmmm. The Economist accuses Syria of “erasing” the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp next to Damascus.

• Regarding Hamas, Malaysia and the drone engineer killed in Kuala Lumpur, Jonathan Schanzer comments:

The longer Hamas operatives like al-Batsh are welcome on Malaysian soil, the more likely it becomes that Israel moves against them. But for Kuala Lumpur, the concern should probably be the financial links that can be drawn between the terrorist group and Malaysian banks or financial institutions. With the Hamas-Malaysia connection increasingly exposed, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where new U.S. sanctions are not under consideration.

Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
• Plenty of commentary about Israel, Iran and the future of the nuclear accords . . .

– Matthew Kroenig: Why Netanyahu’s revelations are significant
– Emily Landau: Netanyahu’s speech proves what we knew all along — and that changes everything
– Amb. Mark Regev: The Iran nuclear deal was based on lies and is untenable
– Dennis Ross: Israel’s intel coup actually provides good arguments for staying in the Iran nuclear deal
– Abdulrahman Al-Rashed: Iran must prove Netanyahu is lying
– Yaakov Katz: The Iran show
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Mossad’s achievement a deterring strategic factor in Israel-Iran conflict
– Yaroslav Trofimov: Can Israel’s clash with Iran be contained in Syia? (click via Twitter)
– Nahum Barnea: Israelis deserve to know: Is Netanyahu pursuing war with Iran?
– Washington Post (staff-ed) Netanyahu’s revelations aren’t enough to justify ripping up the Iran nuclear agreement
– Fred Weir: As Israel-Iran rivalry burns, Russia’s Tehran ties may get singed
– Reuel Marc Gerecht: The nuclear deal makes America complicit in Iranian crimes

quill and ink

• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend . . .

– Yossi Klein Halevi: How Israelis see the world
– Yossi Kuperwasser: Abbas is not the problem
– Daniel Gordis: Netanyahu and Abbas clarify Israel’s choices
– Avi Issacharoff: In Gaza, setting fire to their own gas lines to fuel the flames of protest
– Cnaan Liphshiz: It’s not just Abbas: Blaming Jews for the Holocaust is widespread
– Anshel Pfeffer: Abbas’ Holocaust revisionism shows his moral failure, but his political failures are much worse
– Lev Golinkin: When Abbas spews anti-Semitic vitriol the response is thunderous. Not so much for Poland’s prime minister
– Dr. Reuven Berko: The end of the peace process
– Seth Frantzman: Palestinian antisemitism: Skin deep, widespread and not well-understood
– Hen Mazzig: The nakbas
– Stephen Daisley: Jewish voters didn’t just beat Labour, they shamed them
– Colbert King: The stench of anti-Semitism and racism mars Washington

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Peter Beinart.

 

Featured image: CC BY Pedro Ribeiro Simes;; flags CC BY-NC fabcom; Corbyn via YouTube/Daily Mail; Netanyahu via YouTube/IsraeliPM; quill CC0 Pixabay/Ashreila;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05-02-2018-hamas-stipend/
Gaza Man Asks IDF to Shoot Him So He Can Get Hamas Stipend?
BY PESACH BENSON  MAY 2, 2018
 
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Today’s Top Stories
1. Palestinian charged with asking IDF to shoot him to get Hamas stipend.
 
Hamas member Mustafa Banna allegedly asked soldiers during Gaza border clashes to shoot him so he could get $500 payment and stipend from the terror group; he entered Israel and was arrested.
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2. Guatemala raises flag over new Jerusalem embassy site ahead of May 16 opening.
Where do matters stand with other countries in the mix to move? President Donald Trump said he may visit Jerusalem for the May 14 opening of the United States embassy. President Horacio Cartes of Paraguay pledged to relocate his country’s embassy. The Czech Republic announced a three-staged move. The National Congress of Honduras passed a non-binding resolution supporting a move. Then there’s Romania, which is, uh, a more complicated story.
 
Last but not least, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan told Mahmoud Abbas that Tokyo has no plans to relocate its embassy.
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Avi Mayer
?
@AviMayer
 It's official: the flag of Guatemala has been raised in Jerusalem, making it the first country to move its embassy to Israel's capital. ???????? (via @arik3000)
 
5:36 PM - May 1, 2018
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3. “The Trump administration has taken the position that Israel should not be required to discuss giving up nuclear weapons, which according to foreign sources it possesses, without recognition by all states in Middle East of the country’s right to exist.” Haaretz explains that the US policy shift pre-empts calls for making the Mideast a nuclear-free zone as diplomats lay the groundwork the 2020 conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons:
 
Israel took the position that the issue of nuclear weapons could not be divorced from security issues in the region or from the state of war that exists between Israel and some other countries. Israel also argued that some of the signatories to the treaty, including Iran, Syria and Libya, were attempting to develop nuclear weapons.
 
building campaign
 
4. Business Insider: Israel ‘Stomping on Iran’: News site prematurely declares “one of the worst wars the Middle East has ever seen” is already Israel’s fault.
 
5. New York Times Electrifies Israel’s Gaza Fence: Are Palestinians trying to breach the Israel-Gaza border fence really getting shock therapy?
 
Iranian Nukes
• Has Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech reawakened Iranian protests against the mullahs?
 
• While the US and Europe are divided about the impact of the Iranian nuclear revelations, the New York Times suggests Israel’s next steps:
 
And Israel is not finished with its lobbying campaign. Officials there said they planned to share much of the data they had harvested from the secret archive with the International Atomic Energy Agency — including data on some previously unknown nuclear sites in Iran.
Israel’s intention appears to be to force the organization, a United Nations agency, to demand that the Iranians allow inspections of those sites, even though some of them may have been closed or dismantled years ago. Since Iran considers many of these military sites, the Israelis, and some American officials, expect the Iranians to balk at the demand — inciting another crisis for the deal.
 
Indeed, Germany says the IAEA should probe Israeli claims.
 
International Atomic Energy Agency
 
• According to Israeli media reports, Iran breached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, a.k.a. the Iranian nuclear deal) by simply holding onto all the files.
 
• The Mossad heist has the Iranian regime “quaking in its boots.”
 
Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli and American officials, the European Union and Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt denounced Mahmoud Abbas for antisemitic remarks in an address to the Palestinian National Council on Monday.
 
Abbas — who wrote his dissertation on the Holocaust — blamed the Holocaust on “Jewish behavior,” in particular money-lending and banking. He also described Israel’s origin as a European “colonial project aimed at planting foreign bodies in the region.”
 
As for the rest of the PNC powwow, The Media Line reports that Hamas boycotted the gathering despite holding 70 of the council’s 700 seats. Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were also no-shows.
 
electricity• Israel signed a $775 million deal to build four electricity power plants in the West Bank and for the PA to take responsibility for the power distribution. Reuters notes that the deal does not apply to the Gaza Strip:
 
As part of the new deal, the PA will pay off a 915-million-shekel debt to the state-owned utility Israel Electric Corp (IEC), while taking charge of the distribution of electricity to West Bank Palestinians.
 
• A new Israeli liaison to the Palestinians was sworn in on Sunday. Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rokon, a Druze officer, replaces Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai as head of Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).
 
• President Reuven Rivlin landed in Addis Ababa for the first visit to Ethiopia by an Israeli head of state. Among the items on Rivlin’s itinerary: meeting with Falash Mura leaders who are threatening a mass hunger strike to protest delays in bringing the 8,000 members of their community to Israel.
 
• British Ambassador to Israel David Quarrey was provocatively filmed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists during the diplomat’s secret visit to the Gaza border.
?
@rafsanchez
 Unusual day at the office for @DavidQuarrey, UK ambassador to Israel, who spent last Friday at the Gaza border in a flak jacket. Part of his trip was filmed by Islamic Jihad. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/01/british-ambassador-israel-filmed-islamic-terrorist-group-secret/ … 
 
4:23 PM - May 1, 2018
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Window into Israel
• The Knesset passed a bill barring terrorists from becoming members of the parliament. Details at the Jerusalem Post.
 
The goal of the legislation is to prevent those who have taken action against the state and its citizens for ideological reasons from being fielded as a candidate by a party. The sponsors of the bill said they hoped it would also educate the public about the seriousness of hate crimes.
 
• Principal of pre-military academy resigns after flash flood disaster.
 
• It’s days like this when I wish Jews controlled the weather:
 
Cities Cancel Holiday Bonfires as Hot, Dry Weather Hits Israel
 
• For commentary on the domestic scene, Gil Troy weighs in on the Nahal Tzafit flash flood disaster and Nimrod Goren on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
 
Around the World
• Morocco cuts Iran ties over an alleged arms delivery to Polisario Front separatists in Western Sahara, reports AFP. Moroccan officials also accused Hezbollah of complicity. Is Iran trying to gain a foothold in northwestern Africa now?
• German newspaper’s Israeli flag experiment yields ‘frightening results.’
 
• The first person convicted of under Malaysia’s new Fake News Law is a 46-year-old Danish citizen who posted a YouTube video accusing Malaysian police of taking almost an hour to respond to the shooting of Hamas engineer and lecturer Fadi al-Batsh. Salah Salem Saleh Sulaiman will be spending a month behind bars.
 
Police insisted they only took eight minutes to respond, and the charge against Sulaiman said he had “with ill intent, published fake news through a video on YouTube.” Sulaiman pleaded guilty but said the video was posted in a “moment of anger” and he did not mean any harm. The judge fined Sulaiman 10,000 ringgit ($2,500) but he opted to spend a month in jail because he could not pay.
 
If you read 5 Tips For Sorting Through the News and Sharing Responsibly on Social Media, you’re less likely to be fooled by such posts or run afoul of Malaysian authorities.
 
Commentary
Iran• Plenty of commentary about the Israel, Iran and the nuclear deal.
 
– Bret Stephens: The Iran deal is a lie
– David Ignatius: We know Iran’s nuclear secrets now. Let’s make the most of them.
– Raphael Ahren: Very existence of Iran’s secret nuclear archive may be a violation of nuke deal
– Dore Gold: Netanyahu’s wake-up call to the world on the Iranian nuclear program
– Dr. Haim Shine: Mockery backfires on the media
– David Sharma: Iran nuclear deal is the lesser evil
– Con Coughlin: In taking on Iran, we must not ignore the dangerous terrorists the ayahtollas still sponsor
– David Harsanyi: Team Obama should just accept they failed with Iran
– Associated Press: Iran has few options to avenge Syria strikes
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Trump’s ‘madness’ may be doing the trick
 
• For a sense of what the critics from the Nothing New Here Choir are saying, see John Kerry, John Kirby, Steven Simon, Jeffrey Lewis, Catherine Philp, CNN‘s experts and a Los Angeles Times staff-ed.
 
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
 
– Jonathan Freedland: It’s right to condemn Mahmoud Abbas for his antisemitic remarks
– Michael Starr: Hamas’ newest innovation: The human shield-wall
– Khaled Abu Toameh: The real Gaza blockade
– Amb. Alan Baker: Manipulating the truth about Gaza
– Linda Maizels: Black nationalist antisemitism on campus requires Jews to be ‘white’
 
Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND sinkdd; electricity CC0 Pixabay; Iran CC BY yeowatzup;



http://honestreporting.com/business-insider-israel-stomping-on-iran/
Business Insider: Israel ‘Stomping on Iran’
BY DANIEL POMERANTZ  MAY 2, 2018
I’m just going to throw this out there:

Yes, you read that correctly: according to Business Insider, Israel is “stomping” on Iran. And it’s Israel that is bringing about war. Not just any war, but “one of the worst wars the Middle East has ever seen.”

This at a time when the Syrian civil war has already killed over half a million people…with Iranian support.

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Journalistic negligence
In truth, Iran and Syria are posing a very real and immediate military threat to Israel, and Israel is responding in a highly calculated manner.

This reality seems lost on writer Alex Lockie, who portrays Iran and Syria as if they were some kind of hapless victims, rather than highly armed, and very active, aggressors.

Here are just a few of the article’s most problematic statements:

Experts say a strike in Syria on Sunday that is believed to have killed Iranians was most likely carried out by Israel in a marked escalation of military conflict.

What is Israel allegedly targeting? Iranians? No, Israel targets Iranian military bases including  hardened missile bunkers. And how is responding to such a threat an “escalation?” When Iran places offensive weapons within striking distance of Israel, that is an escalation.
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The Times of Israel

@TimesofIsrael
 Satellite captures destruction on Syrian base after alleged Israeli strike https://www.timesofisrael.com/satellite-captures-destruction-on-syrian-base-after-alleged-israeli-strike/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter …

11:17 AM - May 1, 2018
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This article addresses presumed Israeli strikes in recent days, but he does not include satellite photos of fortified Iranian military bases such as the one above, nor does he mention that one strike  destroyed 200 Iranian missiles.

And surely we can all come together and be supportive when Israel targets Syrian chemical weapons infrastructure: which the US has linked directly to Iran. The article makes no mention of this at all.

Instead, Business Insider paints Iran and Syria, who are pounding Syrian civilians with gruesome chemical weapons, as being some kind of victims, because…Israel. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

Israel appears to have been punishing Iran and walking all over Syria as the US expresses support for Jerusalem.

Israel is walking all over Syria? Yet it is Iran that has troops and bases on the ground. It is Iran that is supporting Assad with arms and funding, and is participating in one of the greatest atrocities in the 21st century (the Syrian civil war).

What they won’t tell you
All professional journalism requires both accuracy and context. So for the benefit of our readers, here are a few of the critical items that Business Insider is keeping from you:

No mention that Iran’s declared policy is to “annihilate Israel” and claims it will succeed within 25 years.
No mention that in Syria over half a million people have already died, with much of the carnage attributable to…you guessed it: Iran.
No mention at all of Hezbollah, with its 130,000 to 150,000 medium and long-range missiles and rockets, right on Israel’s border. Hezbollah is an internationally recognized terror organization that serves as a proxy for…again: Iran.
No mention that Iran also happens to be one of the world’s greatest sponsors of terrorism, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans.
We hoped that Business Insider or its writer might be responsive when we called this to his attention. After all, everyone makes mistakes, right?
HonestReporting

@HonestReporting
 Congratulations to @businessinsider @alexjlockie for the most ridiculous coverage of Bibi's nuclear expose. Portraying Iran as a poor victim of Israeli malevolence is really pushing the limits of reality. Israel is "stomping on Iran"? Seriously?! https://twitter.com/businessinsider/status/991024365876760579 …

3:05 PM - May 1, 2018
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Writer Alex Lockie’s reply indicated merely that he thought  his article was “confusing” to us. On the contrary, Business Insider seems to be the party that is confused: about the very nature of professional and ethical journalism.

In our opinion, it is time to bring this to the attention of Business Insider’s editors, and we need your help.

Please share your considered comments with Business Insider at:  corrections@businessinsider.com. Write “Correction request” in the subject line. In the body of the email, include the link to this story and provide supporting details about the problem.

http://honestreporting.com/idns-4-29-2018-gaza-border-violence/
Gaza Border Violence
BY DANIEL POMERANTZ  APRIL 29, 2018
 
Israeli youth commemorate 10 teenagers who died in flash floods over the weekend.
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Today’s Top Stories
1. Renewed violence on the Gaza border:  with some 12,000 to 14,000 Palestinians in attendance, several hundred tried to breach Israel’s border. The New York Times reported the following interesting and rather confusing twist:
 
The breach of the fence was no mere protest: Those assaulting it threw firebombs and rolled burning tires at the fence to try to melt it; at least some carried pistols, according to both the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses…four Palestinian protesters said they saw two men with handguns fire at Israeli soldiers and then flee…these accounts could not be verified.
 
In an exclusive conversation with HonestReporting, the IDF clarified that they are not aware of a pistol related incident.
 
Three Palestinians were killed, bringing the total to 42 over the past month. According to one UN agency 5,500 Palestinians were injured, including 1,739 by live fire, though the figures appear to come ultimately from the less than reliable Hamas controlled Gaza Ministry of Health.
 
US ambassador Nikki Haley denounced Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, a side to this story that has been escaping much of the mainstream press as well as the UN itself.
 
2. Ten Israeli teenagers died in flash floods in southern Israel, while on a hike as part of a “mehina” or post-high school, pre-military educational program. Israeli police arrested three of the youth leaders on charges of negligence.
 
3. War of words with Iran: In response to earlier statements by Iranian officials, Israel’s defense minister Avigdor Liberman said:
 
We hear many (Iranian) threats … but if they [Iran] attack Tel Aviv, we will strike Tehran.
 
Iran and its proxies continue to maintain a military presence in Lebanon and Syria near Israel’s borders, and there have been occasional, limited clashes with IDF.
 
Israel and the Palestinians
• WATCH: Crossing Divides: Israeli school for both Jews and Arabs.
 
• IDF officer Ben Deri who shot and killed a Palestinian teenager with a live round during a stone throwing riot in 2014 is sentenced to 9 months in prison. The IDF forces at the scene had been instructed to use only rubber-coated bullets.
 
Around the World
•As one of his first actions as Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo plans to visit the Mideast, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel.
 
• Much discussion about remembering the Holocaust this week, including two pieces in the Washington Post (one and two). In addition, Poland criticizes a statement by Congressman  Ro Khanna, (D-CA) that the new Polish law criminalizing certain Holocaust related statements glorifies Nazi collaborators and denies the Holocaust.
 
• In what we’ve found to be a rather unusual move for mainstream press, both Newsweek and Reuters covered deaths of Palestinians in Syria.
 
• Jeremy Corbyn’s official Facebook page is littered with vile anti-Semitic posts including claims of ‘supremacist Jews’ taking over Labour, and his new ‘strategy adviser’ once compared Israel with ISIS and worked for group demanding boycott of all Israeli goods. Saddening, but not shocking.
 
Jeremy Corbyn
• Merkel’s antisemitism envoy ‘not surprised’ Jews want to leave Germany.
 
Commentary/Analysis
• Why would an ordinary Palestinian participate in the protests/clashes/riots on the Gaza border? Here’s a different view on the events.
 
• In Gaza, Hamas Is the Oppressor – Not Israel – Michael Levin
 
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
 
–Former U.S. Peace Negotiator: Conditions for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Are Not Present – Aaron David Miller interviewed by Michael Young
–Is Palestinian Terrorism the Result of Desperation? – Fred Maroun
–Paralyzed Man Finishes London Marathon Aided by Israeli Robotic Suit – Tamar Ben-Ozer
 
Image: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04-26-2018-malaysia-mossad/
Was Malaysia Hit Part of Larger Mossad Operation?
BY PESACH BENSON  APRIL 26, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. The killing of a Hamas drone expert in Malaysia was part of what the New York Times reports is a broader Mossad operation “to dismantle a Hamas project that sends Gaza’s most promising scientists and engineers overseas to gather know-how and weaponry to fight Israel.”

The Times also reports that Fadi al-Batsh was also negotiating arms deals with North Korea.

Ahmed Abu Hussein
Ahmed Abu Hussein
2. A Palestinian “journalist” shot at a Gaza protest died of his wounds yesterday. The reason I’m qualifying the “journalist” designation is because of what Associated Press says about 24-year-old Ahmed Abu Hussein’s employer:
Hussein was working for “Voice of People” — a radio station linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and the EU.

PFLP-linked radio stations don’t do journalism, they do propaganda and incitement. MK and former journalist Yair Lapid articulated the distinctions in a 2016 letter to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) after the press organization denounced Israel for closing down an Islamic Jihad-affiliated TV station:

[Lapid] added that “freedom of the press does not extend to terrorist propaganda and to those who incite to murder. The content on Palestine Today would not pass the editorial guidelines of any of your members. I was a journalist for over three decades; this isn’t journalism. This isn’t free speech, this is hate speech. You are not defending press freedom; you are defending incitement to murder.”

3. It’s the equivalent of terminating the Grammys. Germany has discontinued the Echo music awards amid an antisemitism controversy.

“The Echo brand is so badly damaged that a complete new beginning is necessary,” the BVMI announced, adding that the “Echo will be no more.”

“The events surrounding this year’s Echo, for which the board apologized, cannot be reversed, but we can ensure that such a mistake does not happen again in the future,” the BVMI statement said.

4. AP Exposes Hamas Definition of ‘Non-Violence’: Thumbs up to AP for shedding light on Hamasplaining non-violence.

building campaign

Israel and the Palestinians
• Czech president announces 3-stage plan to move embassy to Jerusalem – eventually. I’m not holding my breath.

Israeli politicians hailed [Milos] Zeman’s speech, despite the fact that as president, he has limited executive power. Acting Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis is opposed to a full-fledged relocation of the embassy, saying he does not want to break with EU policy.

• Reporters Without Borders released its annual World Press Freedom index. Of the 180 countries listed, Israel‘s press freedom was ranked at 87 (problematic) while the Palestinian areas were ranked at 134 (bad). Norway and North Korea were rated the world’s best and worst respectively.

Window into Israel
Esther Hayut
Supreme Court President Esther Hayut
• Government ministers agreed to postpone a vote on a contentious “Supreme Court Override Bill.”
Members of the ruling coalition want to enable the Knesset to re-approve legislation that the Supreme Court strikes down. The delay was a condition for Supreme Court President Esther Hayut to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the Override Bill. More at the Times of Israel.

The legislation would take the form of a passage added to the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. With no constitution, Israel’s basic laws set the parameters of the balance of power between different branches of government.

• A government report shows scant number of African migrants consented to leave Israel.

• For commentary on the domestic scene, David Horovitz and a Haaretz staff-ed weigh in on the African migrants situation. Emmanuel Navon and Gershom Gorenberg address the Supreme Court override bill.

Around the World
• Thousands of Germans wore kippot (skullcaps) in solidarity against antisemitism yesterday. The German government’s anti-Semitism czar agrees it can be unsafe to wear kippah in public.

In an interview with The Times of Israel, Dr. Felix Klein also said the recent increase in anti-Semitic violence on German streets is due to a “brutalization of our political culture,” and argued that the beating of an Israeli last week in Berlin proved that German Jews’ concerns about the major influx of Muslim and Arab refugees were legitimate.

Most European Jews stopped wearing kippot for safety anyway.

View image on Twitter

Henrik Enderlein
@henrikenderlein
 After recent anti-Semitic violence in Berlin, large daily @Tagesspiegel prints a cutout do-it-yourself #Kippa. Asks Berliners to wear it today in sign of solidarity. #NeverForget #berlinträgtkippa

6:15 AM - Apr 25, 2018
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• In anti-Semitism row, Belgian prime minister slams honor for pro-BDS British director Ken Loach.

• This is what we’ve come to: In London, dozens of Labour politicians escorted Jewish MP Ruth Smeeth across Westminster to an anti-Semitism hearing as she ran a gauntlet of Corbynistas heckling her and branding her abuse claims a ‘witch hunt.’ Smeeth was there to give evidence at a disciplinary hearing for Labour activist Marc Wadsworth. More at the Daily Mail.

In 2016, Wadsworth was suspended from Labour for haranguing Smeeth, a Jewish MK, at the launch of the Chakrabarti Inquiry report into allegations of antisemitism and racism within Labour.

• Students, activists disrupt talk by Israeli diplomat at Syracuse U.

• Report finds Canadian antisemitism is ‘becoming mainstream’ as number of incidents rise.

Josh Rosen
Josh Rosen
• UCLA’s star quarterback Josh Rosen, who is expected to be a high pick in tonight’s NFL draft, says he gets called antisemitic slurs during games. The JTA picked up on Rosen’s interview with Michael Silver. Here’s the key snippet fueling the buzz:
When it comes to trash talk in his current sport, Rosen has proven to be an easy target. “I get a lot of Jewish things,” Rosen says. “My nose, particularly. I get, like, ‘Stay the f— down, you Jewish bastard … I’m gonna break your f—- nose, you Jew.’ ”

Rosen’s reaction? Keep it coming.

“I really like when people try to get in my head,” he says. “I like away games more than home games. I like silencing crowds; that’s a big thing. One of my best games was at Arizona my freshman year. It was College GameDay and they had a ton of banners; they had my face on the queen from ‘Frozen’. They had, ‘Josh Rosen’s Bar Mitzvah Wasn’t Even Lit.’ When people really get into me, it gets my competitive juices flowing.”

• Brazilian governor apologizes for welcoming Hezbollah official.

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

– Oded Granot: Israel can meet the S-300 challenge
– Alex Fishman: Gaza protests: Hamas preparing its ‘victory picture’
– Aviv Ezra: Hamas can’t mask intent
– Radu Golban: Why is Romania’s president refusing to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem?
– Dr. Alex Joffe: Transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to whom?
– Yves Mamou: Has Europe even tried to fight antisemitism?
– Seth Frantzman: What the new French-American tag team means for the Middle East

 

Featured image: CC BY-ND michael davis-burchat; Hayut via Wikimedia Commons; Rosen via YouTube/SkyDesigns;

For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04-25-2018-jordan-citizenship/
Jordan Moves to Revoke Mahmoud Abbas’s Citizenship
BY PESACH BENSON  APRIL 25, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
Jordan1. According to Arab reports picked up by the Jerusalem Post, Amman “began the process of revoking the Jordanian citizenship of about 30 Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials and their families,” including PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Many Senior Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials, including Abbas and his two sons, were given Jordanian citizenship over a decade ago, a Jordanian official disclosed in early 2011 . . .

The report did not disclose any information as to why Jordan decided to begin the process of revoking the Palestinian leaders’ citizenship now.

2. Russian Defense Ministry confirmed plans to transfer advanced S-300 air-defense systems to Syria.

It’s likely related to reports that the head of Moscow’s Security Council held separate meetings in Sochi with Israeli and Iranian counterparts.

3. British Jewish leaders came away disappointed and angry after meeting with Labour chief Jeremy Corbyn. Stephen Pollard details why the meeting broke down. Ahead of the meeting, Corbyn published an op-ed in the Evening Standard about his efforts to rid Labour of antisemitism.

Meanwhile, Jewish Labour MP Fabian Hamilton took to The Independent to express his own disillusionment with Corbyn.

building campaign

Israel and the Palestinians
• CNN: “US intelligence is monitoring a series of cargo flights from Iran into Syria, that the US suspects may be carrying weapons systems into Syria for potential use by Bashar al-Assad’s regime or Iranian forces.”

An administration official confirms to CNN that the flights took place and the US and Israel are both concerned the cargo could potentially include weapons that could eventually be used to threaten Israel.

Richard Dannatt
Lord Richard Dannatt
• The High Level Military Group, a group of former senior military leaders from NATO and other democratic countries, issued a 76-page report (pdf format) assessing the threat Hezbollah poses and the likelihood of war.
One member of the HLMG, Lord Richard Dannatt, a former UK Chief of the General Staff, got op-ed space in the Daily Telegraph to explain that the West “has no coherent plan” to avert a war between Hezbollah and Israel:

In the absence of a concerted international effort to rein in Iran in the region – and no such coherent Western strategy currently exists – we must be prepared to expect Israel to defend its vital security interests robustly. Many criticise the IDF for being heavy-handed but, having quizzed their Chiefs of Staff personally, I believe they would act within acceptable legal and moral standards. Yet the legitimate military objectives Israel would be forced to attack in a conflict with Iran, and its proxy terror-armies hiding among civilians in Lebanon and Syria, would make for a very grave war.

To have any hope of avoiding such a conflict, Britain and her allies must understand Israel’s position, making clear to Iran and Hezbollah that their campaign of terror against Israel will be met by international condemnation and an acceptance of Israel’s fully legitimate military reaction. We should now proscribe Hezbollah in its entirety, ending the farce of our denying a reality that even their own leader articulates – that it is but one organisation, and its terrorism and politics are linked inextricably. If they say it, why don’t we accept it?

The Jerusalem Post and a separate Telegraph piece picked up on the story.

Hezbollah
A Hezbollah parade
• Germany: Every state can name capital, but not Jerusalem.

• The Financial Times (click via Google) visited Efrat as the rising price of settlement homes suggest they’re here to stay. It’s a good report, though I must quibble about some missing context. One reason Israelis are comfortable purchasing in the Gush Etzyon bloc, the West Bank area south of Jerusalem, is that its widely expected to remain Israeli after a peace agreement is reached.

But his $500,000, two-storey villa has shot up in price and is now valued at about $1.3m.

It is a trend that reflects a growing belief among Israelis that most of the settlements that dot the West Bank, especially those closest to Jerusalem, such as Efrat, are de facto permanent. The price of an average four-room apartment in the main settlements has jumped 60 per cent in the past decade, according to Israel government data analysed for the Financial Times by Haim Mesilaty, head of the Real Estate Appraisers Association.

Window into Israel
Saharonim
African asylum seekers who had been detained at Saharonim prison, southern Israel, due to their refusal to leave Israel to a third country, seen being released from the prison. High Court ruled there is no legal justification to keep them in detention. April 15, 2018. Photo by Hadas Parush/FLASH90
• Israel scrapped a contentious plan to deport tens of thousands of African migrants and officials ordered that detention centers be prepared for reopening. The Washington Post sums up where the situation now stands:
The government’s announcement Tuesday that it was abandoning the effort to send the migrants to unidentified African countries — widely reported to be Rwanda and Uganda — was welcomed as a positive step by advocates for about 36,000 migrants in Israel. But the move is also likely to bring even more uncertainty to those who have no official status here.

See also the Times of Israel, which gauged the mood of residents of southern Tel Aviv.

• Israeli Border Police officer sentenced to 9 months for killing Palestinian teen after agreeing to a plea deal.

• Two cars were torched in an Israeli-Arab village near Nazareth. Graffiti found on a nearby wall saying “Jews let’s win” has police treating it as a hate crime.

Around the World
• US Supreme Court rules that victims of Palestinian terror cannot sue Arab Bank in American courts.

SCOTUS
US Supreme Court
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict overshadows celebrations as Jewish community pulls out of annual Liberation Day march in Rome.

• U. California-Berkeley students call for removal of ‘antisemitic,’ ‘anti-Israel’ lecturer.

• After more than 50 New York U. student groups pledged to boycott Israel and its supporters, the JTA visited the campus to find out What it’s like to be a Jewish student at NYU.

• George Washington U. student government passes Israel divestment resolution.
Avi Mayer

@AviMayer
24 Apr
Last night, a handful of activists managed to ram through a student government resolution calling on George Washington University to divest from companies that do business with Israel. Today, GW's president clarifies – that ain't gonna happen: http://bit.ly/2qXaFPn  pic.twitter.com/q3qmUxvCLy


Avi Mayer

@AviMayer
 Fun fact: of all the schools at which radical activists have managed to shove through resolutions calling for the administration to boycott or divest from Israel, not one has ever actually done so. https://twitter.com/AviMayer/status/988838555920293888 …

7:00 PM - Apr 24, 2018
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Commentary
• “The extreme levels of brutality meted out by the Assad regime and its allies against civilians in Syria have improved the image of the IDF by comparison across the Arab world,” writes Elizabeth Tsurkov.

On April 17, 2018, when Palestinians mark Prisoner’s Day, a popular Syrian opposition website decided to mark the occasion by posting an infographic comparing Israeli prisons and those of the Assad regime.

The infographic shows that while 7,000 Palestinians are incarcerated in Israel, 220,000 Syrians are held in regime detention facilities. According to the infographic, 210 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons since 1967, while 65,000 Syrians have died in regime detention over the past seven years.

Such irreverence of Palestinian suffering by an Arab media outlet would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

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

– Anshel Pfeffer: Everyone’s talking about Russia’s S-300. Why now, and why should Israel be worried?
– Dennis Ross: Russia risks a wider Mideast war (click via Twitter)
– Fred Weir: Will Russia’s involvement in Syria end up burning its ties with Israel?
– Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser: Iranian moves in Syria threaten Israel
– Moshe Arens: Palestinian refugees – War by other means
– Jerusalem Post (staff-ed): The West Bank is “disputed,” not “occupied”
– Chemi Shalev: Trump and Macron White House lovefest should make Netanyahu anxious
– Ada Aharoni: Uprooting of Jews from Arab countries, an answer to modern antisemitism
– Thomas Friedman: Israel’s got its own refugee dilemma: African ‘Dreamers’
– Ron Kampeas: Does Natalie Portman’s snub of Netanyahu make her the face of liberal Zionism?
– Attila Somfalvi: Natalie Portman is just a symptom of US Jewry’s changing attitude towards Israel
– Douglas Schoen and Arielle Confino: Want to fight anti-Semitism? Teach people about the Holocaust.


Featured Image: CC0 TheAngryTeddy; Jordan coat of arms CC BY-SA Wikimedia Commons; Dannatt via YouTube/Max Mallows; Hezbollah via YouTube/Gika Jisa; Supreme Court CC BY-NC-ND Aaron Fellmeth Photography; thinking CC0 Max Pixel;

For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04-24-2018-hamas-divided/
Hamas Leadership Divided Over ‘March of Return’
BY PESACH BENSON  APRIL 24, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. There’s an internal rift within the top leadership of Hamas over ending the weekly “March of Return” clashes along the Gaza border. According to Israel HaYom, Egyptian intelligence officials offered to open the Rafah border crossing more frequently and ease the passage of goods if Hamas ended the clashes. The Egyptians then improved the offer by offering to advance a prisoner swap with Israel. But Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh rejected the offer without consulting the rest of the leadership:

The official, who had come into contact with Haniyeh as part of an Egyptian security delegation to Gaza, added that high-ranking Hamas officials, including [Gaza strongman Yahye] Sinwar, were furious with Haniyeh and had accused him of coordinating Hamas policy with Tehran rather than the group’s own leadership . . .

According to the official, there are voices in Hamas that argue that the border marches have run their course in their current format and that the diminishing number of demonstrators from week to week is actually undermining the potential for the grand finale demonstration. The final march, planned to coincide with the day on which Palestinians observe the Nakba (catastrophe) of having been displaced by the establishment of the State of Israel, is expected to draw more than 100,000 demonstrators. The official said that Sinwar and other high-ranking Hamas figures share this view.

Furthermore, an associate close to Sinwar told Israel Hayom that the Sinwar camp believes that if the border marches continue in their current format it could undo any progress that has been made thus far and that it could undermine the general Palestinian interests as well.

Haniyeh and Sinwar
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh talks to reporters as Yahye Sinwar looks on in January, 2018
2. Blazing kites from Gaza set fire to Israeli wheat field, destroying 100 dunams (25 acres) of crops.

Gazans sent four kites affixed with flaming materials over the border on Monday, setting fire to wide swathes of a wheat field in southern Israel as Palestinians vowed to use the new tactic to try and cause “panic and attrition among the enemy.”

3. “Palestinian diplomats in Geneva have filed a complaint against Israel for what they say are breaches of its obligations under a UN anti-racism treaty, triggering what may be a lengthy and high-profile investigation,” The Guardian reports.

4. Natalie Portman and ‘Regime Change’? The Independent’s coverage of Natalie Portman and the Genesis Prize claims that she campaigned for Israeli “regime change.” Regime change?!



5. Headline Fail: Sanitizing a Hamas Terrorist: According to a Financial Times headline, an assassinated senior Hamas terrorist is a “Palestinian lecturer.”

6. HR Prompts The New Yorker to Correct Trump Jerusalem Embassy Error: President Trump declared that he would move the US embassy to Jerusalem. So why did The New Yorker specify “East Jerusalem” when Trump never specified where in Israel’s capital city?

building campaign

Israel and the Palestinians
• Egypt is reportedly allowing Palestinians to transfer the body of assassinated Hamas drone engineer Fadi al-Batsh back to Gaza for burial. Israel sought to block the transfer to pressure Hamas to release the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed during the 2014 Gaza war.

• In the aftermath of the assassination of Batsh’s murder in Malaysia, Haaretz examines the terror group’s overseas operations.

In Turkey, Indonesia, Tunisia, Lebanon and other countries, Hamas is raising funds and recruiting activists, building ties, and increasing its offensive military capabilities . . .

The map of Hamas operatives’ deaths around the world shows that while the organization is trying to find ways to develop outside the confines of the Gaza Strip, there are those who seek to nip this in the bud.


A Palestinian aiming a rock during the “March of Return” along the Israel-Gaza border on April 13, 2018. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90
• The Washington Post takes a closer look at the desperate straits of Gaza’s spiraling economy. Along the way, the paper acknowledges why Israel can’t fundamentally accept the March of Return and how Hamas has co-opted the march to distract Gazans from the Strip’s troubles.
With Hamas cornered and unable to provide basic services, analysts speculate that another war with Israel could be imminent as the militant group seeks a way to divert attention from the internal crisis.

But Hamas has found another release valve — for now, at least.

The idea for the weekly protests, dubbed the “March of Return,” has been widely attributed to Palestinian activist Ahmad Abu Artema, who disavowed any political affiliation and said he believes in a one-state solution to the conflict, an arrangement in which Palestinians are given rights alongside Israelis in a democratic state.

• An Israeli officer was injured by gunfire during the demolition of alleged terrorist’s home.

• Israel arrested this morning two armed Palestinians who crossed the border from Gaza.

• The IDF retaliated with artillery fire into Syria after an errant mortar shell landed in Golan Heights.

Around the World
• A Dutch newspaper is catching flak for an ‘anti-Semitic’ cartoon about the Gaza protests and Israeli Independence Day. This is from the poison pen of de Volksrant’s Jos Collignon.

de Volksrant

• It’s too soon to assess what this means for Israel-Diaspora ties in the long-term, but Haaretz reports that actress Natalie Portman has energized liberal Zionist students in the US:

Goldblatt says the mantle of legitimacy she lends will embolden young American Jews – specifically fellow progressive Zionists like himself – to feel more comfortable speaking out against Israeli policies that they too find objectionable.

It will also enable them to say, as Portman did in her statement, that you can be critical of the leadership in Israel without wanting to boycott the country.

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

– Dennis Ross: How Hamas exploits the people of Gaza: Protests clarify their cynical tactics
– Moran Stern: The real story behind Gaza’s marches: The Gazans who chose to stay home
– Daniel Siryoti: Understanding the Hamas rift
– Yoni Ben Menachem: Assassination in Malaysia
– Yoav Zitun: Killing of engineer a possible blow to Malaysian terror hotbed
– Maj. Gen. (Res.) Shlomo Turjeman: Israel’s Sinai dilemma
– Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: New twist on an old lie
– Rabbi Eric Yoffie: IfNotNow is so noisy about the occupation. Why is it so quiet about Israel’s right to exist?
– Alexander Apfel: An open letter to Natalie Portman


Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND Sophie; Hamas leaders via YouTube/Al Jazeera English; Portman screengrab from Genesis Prize;

For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04-23-2018-russia-s-300/
Did Russia Threaten Israel Over Syrian Air Defense System?
BY PESACH BENSON  APRIL 23, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. Moscow sort of denied a Russian media report picked up by the Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post that it was moving forward with plans to provide advanced S-300 air defense systems to Syria. Reuters quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying no decision was yet made on the transfer.

The anonymous source behind the report in the Kommersant included a threat to Israel:

The sources told the newspaper that if Israel tried to destroy the anti-aircraft batteries — as analysts have indicated Israel likely would — it would be “catastrophic for all sides.”

Are comments by anonymous Russian military officials — which are then somewhat denied by higher ups — part of a Moscow game to intimidate Israel?
2. Ynet: IDF to release report detailing how Hamas deliberately sends children towards the border fence as human shields. They’re abusing their own kids, purposely putting them in harm’s way.

“The children are sent to the front to face the (IDF) snipers,” a senior IDF official said. “And under the cover of the smoke, they throw Molotov cocktails or sabotage the (security) fence, out of an understanding that we will not hurt them.”

Gaza clashes
A Palestinian kid slinging a stone at Israeli soldiers during the “March of Return.”
3. A Hamasnik was injured in an explosion in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday. Three people, including a child, were reportedly also injured. It wasn’t clear what caused the blast. In a separate incident on Sunday, a Hamasnik was reportedly killed in a Gaza tunnel collapse on Sunday. It wasn’t specified if the collapsed tunnel extended into Israeli territory or was part of a network of other tunnels beneath the Strip.

building campaign

In the News
• Satellite photos obtained by Israeli media indicate precision of raid on Iranian military base in Syria.

The images obtained by the channel show the charred remains of a single hangar at the Tiyas airbase, with the surrounding area relatively unaffected . . .

The strikes did not appear to target Russian military equipment or Syrian anti-aircraft systems that were also at Tiyas.

• Knox College in turmoil as professor says ‘Jews act like Nazis,’ and a Jewish critic is targeted by hate mail.

Jeremy Corbyn
• Jeremy Corbyn’s much-anticipated roundtable on relations with British Jews was called off.

Meanwhile, the Times of London reports Corbyn cleaned up his Twitter feed, having been “forced to unfollow Twitter accounts that liken Israel to the Nazis” following a Sunday Times of London report on the antisemites, conspiracy theorists and Bashar Assad apologists the UK Labour party leader follows.

• Boston-area city council turns away BDS resolution

• A California man was charged with hate crimes for allegedly having ‘kill lists’ of prominent Jewish community members.

Commentary
• Its disingenuous of critics like The Guardian to insist Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders, then denounce Israel for defending those borders. What’s okay for Israel to defend if not the Green Line?

• Must-listen: Former Chief British Rabbi Jonathan Sacks discussed antisemitism on a recent BBC Thought of the Day.

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

– Yossi Yehoshua: Malaysia assassination: Hamas left hanging in the air
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: The Mossad’s hi-tech Hamas hit list
– Seth Frantzman: Why the blind spot to antisemitism?
– New York Daily News (staff-ed): Barnard students against Israel with warped campus vote
– Benjamin Tovias: Natalie Portman and BDS are not one and the same

 

Featured image: CC0 stevepb; Gaza child via IDF Spokesperson’s Unit; Corbyn via YouTube/The Telegraph; writer CC0 Pixabay

Hamas Drone Engineer Killed In Malaysia
BY PESACH BENSON  APRIL 22, 2018
http://honestreporting.com/idns-04-22-2018-drone-engineer/
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Today’s Top Stories
Fadi Albatsh
Fadi Albatsh
1. A Hamas drone and rocket engineer was killed in Malaysia, shot and killed by gunmen on a motorcycle. Officials in Jerusalem dismissed suggestions that Israel was responsible for Albatsh’s death.

The family of Fadi Albatsh is trying to bring his body back to Gaza for burial, but Israeli officials say they won’t allow this as long as Hamas holds the bodies of IDF soldiers Lt. Hadar Goldin and Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, who were killed during the 2014 Gaza war. The New Straits Times reports that the family may try to bring Albatsh to Gaza via Egypt; Israel has asked Cairo not to allow the transfer.

2. The Hamas “Press Office” handed down directives to journalists covering the Gaza fence clashes. Palestinian journalists will have to toe the Hamas line or face the consequences. I haven’t seen any Western papers disclose the intimidation their Palestinian stringers face or how it effects the final product. Bassam Tawil noted the Hamas directives posted online.

In a nutshell, Hamas does not want journalists to use the words “clashes” and “confrontations” when reporting about the demonstrations, or that any demonstrators killed were its own operatives. Photographers are not to take photos of Palestinians throwing rocks or firebombs, and to solely focus on the Israeli response. Journalists are not to quote or rely on Israeli media or inform Palestinians what Israelis are saying about clashes. Journalists are to instead expected to “humanize” the dead and injured Palestinians.

Since the Palestinian journalists covering the “March of Return” are unlikely to ignore Hamas’s new instructions, this will affect the reporting of the international media. Most international media outlets and correspondents employ Palestinian producers and translators and “fixers” to assist in covering Palestinian issues.

A Palestinian journalist who is afraid to defy the Hamas instructions will not tell his employers everything he sees and hears. Some of the Palestinian journalists will also be doing that of their own volition and not necessarily out of fear of Hamas or any other Palestinian group. These journalists see themselves as foot soldiers of the “revolution” and are convinced that their loyalty should be, first and foremost, to their people and cause. And the truth? Well, the truth finishes last.

self censorship
3. The Friday Palestinian clashes along the Gaza border continued. Reports put the number of Palestinians who came out this weekend at 3,000 — a significant drop-off from the 30,000 who showed up for the first “March of Return” three weeks ago. The Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) notes that “Several Palestinians this week flew kites with oil-drenched, burning rags on their tails in an attempt to set alight Israeli fields on the other side of the fence.” Indeed, one flaming kite set an Israeli warehouse ablaze.

Four Palestinians were killed; one was a 14-year-old boy who ignored warnings from his mother and IDF leaflets. Hamas and Fatah figures got into a big fight at Ayoub’s mourning tent as both sides apparently accused each other of trying to exploit the boy’s death for political purposes.

According to Israeli media reports, an initial IDF probe concluded that Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub was trying to damage the border fence.

building campaign

Israel and the Palestinians
• Plenty of news on the issue of embassies relocating to Jerusalem. There’s a political tussle going on in Romania over the issue. Prime Minister Viorica Dancila and the ruling Social-Democrat Party approved a memorandum to begin the process, but President Klaus Iohannis says that A) the move would violate international law and that B) constitutionally, the final decision is his. The Czechs announced plans to open an honorary consulate in the Israeli capital (What’s an honorary consulate?, you ask.)

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that at least six countries are in talks to move their embassies, and that Israel would offer “preferential treatment” to the first 10.

Tnuva• Nicola Khamis, the mayor of the West Bank Christian town of Beit Jala, sparked a BDS storm by disclosing that he’s also a sales representative for the Israeli dairy cooperative, Tnuva:

Khamis said that if the Palestinian Authority government makes a decision not to work in Israel and with Israelis and not to purchase Israeli products, he will be the first to abide by it.

He pointed out that when the PA took a decision last year banning Israeli products from entering the territories under its control, he obeyed the order for the full 19 days and did not market any Israeli goods.

“I work in accordance with the Palestinian law and regulations,” the Beit Jala mayor added. “Palestinian law does not ban Palestinians from working with Israel, including purchasing and selling.”

• Israeli police found a bomb in a Palestinian truck on Independence Day.

• Ynet: “The European parliament in Brussels adopted on Wednesday legislation preventing the transfer of funds from the European Union’s PEGASE to the Palestinian Authority, if those funds are to be used for education to hatred.”

euros

• The US State Department is raising eyebrows for its annual report on human rights around the world, its first issued under the Trump administration. The 2017 report didn’t refer to the West Bank as “occupied.” More on the story at the Jerusalem Post. (The Washington Post notes other conspicuous changes.)

• To international skepticism, Syria and Russia claim their defense systems intercepted a lot of US missiles in last week’s US-led strike. Writing in the National Post, Professor Michael Armstrong uses the controversy to examine disputed claims about Israeli Iron Dome’s success rate.

• Israeli cyber firm says it has evidence Hamas planted spyware in Fatah phones.

• Actress Natalie Portman, who was to be honored with a prestigious Genesis Award, said she would skip the award ceremony because she doesn’t want to appear to endorse Netanyahu, who is scheduled to speak at the affair. Portman initially didn’t specify why she wasn’t attending and early reports and reactions assumed it was because of BDS. Genesis Prize organizers subsequently cancelled the ceremony. See Ynet and JTA coverage plus Portman’s Instagram post and draw your own conclusions.

The Genesis Prize Foundation canceled the prize ceremony, saying in a statement that its organizers “fear that Ms. Portman’s decision will cause our philanthropic initiative to be politicized, something we have worked hard for the past five years to avoid.”
Natalie Portman
Around the World
• German controversy, part 1: A German theater offered free tickets to the premiere of George Tabori’s production of “Mein Kampf” to anyone wearing a swastika armband, while offering Jewish stars to purchasing patrons. The play premiered on April 20, which is also Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Germany outlaws the display of swastikas. How did the evening play out?

• German controversy, part 2 (per Jerusalem Post): A German LGBT group “terminated its account with the Bank for Social Economy over the financial institution’s enabling of organizations that advocate a boycott of the Jewish state.”

Kollegah and Farid Bang
Kollegah and Farid Bang
• German controversy, part 3: Germany’s most prominent music award continues swirling in controversy. A number of Echo Award honorees are returning their prizes in protest over the award for best hip-hop/urban album. Billboard sums up what’s behind the sturm und drang:
In this case, they picked Kollegah and Farid Bang’s Jung Brutal Gutaussehend 3 [Young, brutal, and good-looking]. The lyric that caused the most controversy — “My body is more defined than those of Auschwitz inmates” — is only on a deluxe edition of the duo’s album and the song was not performed at the ECHO ceremony.

• German controversy, part 4: Adam Armoush, a 21-year Israeli Arab in Berlin who didn’t believe Germany was antisemitic, donned a kippa (skullcap) to find out for himself. Armoush was attacked by a man whipping his belt while shouting “Yehudi.” A video of the assault went viral, drawing condemnation and concern. The attacker — a 19-year-old Syrian asylum seeker turned himself in to the police. See Deutsche Welle

Jüdisches Forum
@JFDA_eV
 Antisemitischer Angriff in #Berlin – ein Mann schlägt mit einem Gürtel auf einen Mann ein und bezeichnet ihn wiederholt als "Yahudi" (arabisch für "Jude"). #Antisemitismus

10:32 PM - Apr 17, 2018
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• A recent UK Labour TV advertisement is drawing more attention to the party’s antisemitism problem. It features the general manager of a Leeds mosque who the Daily Mail reports has a history of antisemitic social media posts. And Guido Fawkes points out that ad’s producer, Jake Bowers, also has a history of antisemitic social media posts.

Twitter• The Sunday Times of London examined the nearly 2,500 people and organization that UK Labour Jeremy Corbyn follows on Twitter. According to the Times, he follows :more than 40 accounts that are pro-Palestine and in many cases fiercely anti-Israel. A small number of tweets on those accounts are abusive and some are anti-semitic” and violate both Labour and Twitter policies on antisemitism.

Other accounts Corbyn follows “are used to spread some of the conspiracy theories that seek to exonerate the Syrian regime for the suspected chemical attack in Douma and the Russians for any involvement in the chemical attack in Salisbury against Sergei Skripal.”

Last night Labour sources said that while Corbyn often sends his own tweets, they denied he had seen the anti-semitic ones, claiming he does not have time to read his Twitter timeline.

• A University of Winchester academic who defended Jeremy Corbyn is now being investigated for antisemitism.

• Syracuse University suspends fraternity after video of ‘extremely racist’ behavior surfaces.

• 250 French intellectuals can’t be wrong, can they?

JPost

• Teens apologize for threatening to bomb Swedish Jews at Malmo synagogue.

Commentary/Analysis
• Quote of the day goes to Bret Stephens, addressing international critics of Israel’s response to the Gaza border clashes:

It would also be helpful if they could explain how they can insist on Israel’s retreat to the 1967 borders and then scold Israel when it defends those borders. They can’t. If the armchair corporals want to persist in demands for withdrawals that for 25 years have led to more Palestinian violence, not less, the least they can do is be ferocious in defense of Israel’s inarguable sovereignty. Somehow they almost never are.

• Heather Mann is making waves describing in a Sunday Times of London op-ed the threats and abuse she and her family have received because her father, Labour MP John Mann, fights antisemitism. We’re talking about threats of rape, a vial of suspicious liquid found in the mailbox, visits from the bomb squad, and more.

The abuse received by my dad and other MPs, including Ruth Smeeth, continues to be ignored or denied. Some Labour Party members are even questioning whether these latest threats against my family are real. It’s my, my mum’s and my sister’s safety we are talking about.

We are a strong family. But I understand what so many Jewish Labour supporters are now feeling. I demand leadership from my party.

Last week, her father gave a rousing must-watch speech against antisemitism in the House of Commons.

• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels dealing with Israel, Syria and Iran.

– Ron Prosor: Time to target Hezbollah in Europe
– Alex Fishman: Israel playing on Iranian nerves
– Avi Issacharoff: Israel and Iran are headed for a collision in Syria
– Yaroslav Trofimov: Iran’s moves in Syria raise risk of conflict With Israel (click via Twitter)
– Jennifer Rubin: Another administration causes headaches for Israel in Syria
– Lawrence Freedman: Israel and Iran will joust but know all-out conflict is too risky

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

– Avi Issacharoff: Israel-Hamas shadow war follows Palestinian expats to Malaysia
– Yoav Limor: Hallmarks of an Israeli hit
– Liron Libman: The blurred distinction between armed conflict and civil unrest: Recent events in Gaza
– Hadley Freeman: If people don’t know about the Holocaust, it’s because they don’t really care
– David Collier: Attacking Jews, the whole antisemitism crisis, will ‘be positive for Labour’
– Melanie Phillips: In Britain and Poland, antisemitism’s ugly history repeats itself
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: Did Mark Zuckerberg make Facebook vulnerable to anti-terror lawsuits?

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Roger Cohen.

Featured image: CC BY abstrkt.ch; euros CC BY-NC-ND b.e.n.; Portman via YouTube/Jimmy Kimmel Live; Kollegah und Farid Bang via Wikimedia Commons; Twitter CC BY Jurgen Appelo;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04-18-2018-syria-airstrike/
Syrian Air Strike Targeted Advanced Iranian Air Defenses
BY PESACH BENSON  APRIL 18, 2018

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Today’s Top Stories
1. According to the Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter), last week’s airstrike on Syria’s T4 airbase targeted an advanced Iranian air defense system and that “Israel had begun planning the strike before a suspected Syrian chemical weapons attack on April 7.”

2. During a UK parliamentary discussion on antisemitism, angry Labour backbenchers accused Jeremy Corbyn of lacking the moral clarity and decisiveness to take action against antisemitism within the party. In a stormy meeting that lasted nearly three hours, MPs — some driven to tears — shared the burgeoning hate mail, threats and abuse they and their friends have received for speaking out against antisemitism. More at The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Jewish Chronicle. See Anoosh Chakelian‘s take.


Durham Police Dept.3. At the behest of BDS advocates, the city council of Durham, North Carolina, voted to prohibit international police exchanges. Pro-Palestinian supporters originally sought a resolution singling out police exchanges with Israel.

A police spokesman said the department hasn’t engaged in any exchanges with Israel and doesn’t plan to. WRAL-TV reports former Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez spent a week in Israel undergoing training.

“None of the training had anything to do with militarization,” Lopez said. “It was about leadership, it was learning about terrorism and then learning about how to interact with people who are involved in mass casualty situations and how to manage mass casualty situations.”

Lopez also said while he was chief, two of his commanders went to Washington, D.C., to receive training from Israeli police, and he felt the experiences were valuable.

building campaign

4. AP’s Three-Way Independence Day Botch: Wire service marks Independence Day with a trifecta of errors.

5. HonestReporting’s mission to Israel is soaking up the Memorial Day experiences. The group visited the Heritage Center of the Givati Division in Ashdod, participated in a memorial ceremony at one of the military cemeteries and then visited the Armored Corps Memorial Site and Museum. The somber mood changes at sundown when the Independence Day celebrations kick off.

View image on Twitter

HonestReporting

@HonestReporting
 Israel #MemorialDay visiting IDF'S Givati Brigade. On the vase is the word יזכור we remember. Those who died to keep us safe. Soon going to the memorial ceremony. With #HRmission2018 and the soldiers of Givati.

7:22 AM - Apr 18, 2018
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli intelligence doesn’t believe the US-led missile strikes on Syria have deterred Bashar Assad from using chemical weapons again, per Ynet.

• Gaza gunmen fired on Israeli soldiers operating along the Gaza border on Tuesday evening, prompting an IDF tank to fire shells at a Hamas border post. No Israeli casualties were reported.

• A Palestinian man arrested with knife at Qalandiya checkpoint this afternoon admitted he intended to stab an Israeli.

• Diplomat’s wife snubbed — just for being Israeli.

• An alleged Hamas agent says he met Dutch officials at event organized by Oxfam. The JTA reports that Abu Amin Rashed’s Facebook post about Monday’s meeting in The Hague is raising concerns about government money provided to Oxfam making its way to Hamas.

Around the World
Reuven Rivlin
President Reuven Rivlin and a Holocaust survivor at Auschwitz during the 2018 March of the Living
• Polish nationalists are calling for an investigation of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who they say violated a controversial Holocaust speech law during a recent visit to Auschwitz. AP explains:
At issue in the group’s complaint are comments in which Rivlin reportedly told Polish President Andrzej Duda that Poland allowed the implementation of Germany’s genocide, National Movement Vice President Krzysztof Bosak said.

The alleged comments during commemorations at Auschwitz last Thursday were carried in Israeli media and were not part of Rivlin’s public remarks.

Bosak said it would be unacceptable if Rivlin asserted that Poland bears any responsibility for the Holocaust. While the National Movement understands that diplomatic immunity protects the Israeli president from prosecution, it wants the nature of the president’s remarks to be clarified, he said.

• Italian soccer fans taunted a rival team’s followers with anti-Semitic chants.

• Jewish cemetery vandalized near Paris.

Commentary
• Racheli Frenkel, the mother of Naftali Frenkel, one of the three teens who were kidnapped and murdered in 2014, nails the essence of Memorial Day.

My Memorial Day has hardly changed. It has always been mine, ours, the closest thing to sanctity that can be created by a secular calendar. It has never been perceived as a gesture towards the bereaved family, as a show of respect and goodwill, a gesture towards the victim. It’s coming together around the loss we are all experiencing. One doesn’t have to lose a close relative, God forbid, to feel that this date is part of Israel’s personal and familial calendar.

But our memorial days have never been a veneration of the dead. This isn’t a culture of martyrs. We will always favor, appreciate and celebrate life over death. It is good to live for our country, it is good to live. It is good to raise the price of life.

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Dan Shapiro

@DanielBShapiro
 I again attended the Israeli Air Force Memorial Day ceremony. Amazing how the loving memory of each fallen servicemember is honored, and in the care shown to the bereaved families, whether from this year or decades ago. The solidarity of Israeli public mourning is deeply moving.

1:36 PM - Apr 18, 2018
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• A who’s who of British personalities shared their thoughts on What Israel Means to Me.

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

– Boaz Bismuth: Giving thanks for the miracle of the ordinary
– Rabbi Warren Goldstein: Israel at 70
– Barbara Kay: A gift for Israel’s birthday: a legal summary of its clear legitimacy
– Arsen Ostrovsky: Celebrating Israel’s independence: A story of hope, courage and freedom
– Seth Frantzman: Hezbollah’s war of words telegraphs Iran’s response to Jerusalem
– Roger Boyes: Israel and Iran face a showdown in Syria
– Rick Ekstein: Israel’s search for peace may pass through the Gulf
– Times of London (staff-ed): New lows for Jeremy Corbyn

 

Featured image: CC0 Craig Dennis Rivlin via Facebook/Reuven Ruvi Rivlin;