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http://honestreporting.com/idns-06042017-qatar-hamas/
Did Qatar Expel Leading Hamas Figures?
Israel Daily News Stream6 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
*** Breaking news *** Just before this roundup was published, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli and Togolese guards exchanged blows during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic visit to the West African country of Liberia. More below on the prime minister’s visit.

1. Qatar has reportedly expelled a number of Hamas leaders, presumably due to US leaning on the Gulf state, according to Israeli media which picked up on Arab reports.

It [Qatar] gave no details on where the outside pressure came from, but it comes just two weeks after US President Donald Trump met with Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia, calling on them to form a coalition against Islamist terrorism.
 
Israel’s Channel 10 TV on Saturday night quoted Palestinian officials saying the pressure on Qatar to expel Hamas operatives came from Saudi Arabia and the United States. The sources added that the list of names was “only the beginning” and that further expulsions would follow.

While Hamas denies the reports, this is no doubt related to Iran renewing financial support for Hamas. The Palestinians will eventually find their agenda co-opted by Tehran because sugar daddies come with strings attached:

The deal to restore Hamas’s financial support came after marathon meetings in Lebanon between officials from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hamas, and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group, the report said . . .
 
The Palestinian sources added that Iran views the new agreement with Hamas as an opportunity to build a strong Sunni alliance as it continues its fight against the Gulf states, the Palestinian Authority, and other regional foes.

2. The Iranian land-bridge to the Mediterranean Sea is becoming a reality. The Jerusalem Post notes the significance for Israel of recent developments along the Syria-Iraq border:

Iraqi militias which are close to the Iranian regime have been able to reach a strategically situated village on the Syria-Iraq border. For Israel, it means forces that are close to Tehran pose a risk of linking up through Syria. The Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), reached the village of Um Jaris on the border in northwestern Iraq on Monday. The PMU’s Badr Brigade militia, which spearheaded the dash over 40km. to the border, is close to the Iranian regime . . .
 
Kurdistan24, a Kurdish news channel, reports that the PMU “has previously said it is ready to move inside Syrian territories to continue the fight against [ISIS].”
 
That would be a security concern for Israel, because Hezbollah is present in Syria and uses Syria as a corridor for weapons transfers. Linking up with Shi’ite militias in Iraq that have been compared to Hezbollah and openly show posters of Ayatollah Khamenei, poses a challenge to Jerusalem and the region.
See also Amos Harel and Abdulrahman Al-Rashed on the significance of this land bridge
 

3. Our friends the Turks: The Turkish embassy in Israel hosted banned Islamic Movement chief Sheikh Raed Salah at an iftar dinner, a traditional meal breaking the Ramadan fast. You’ll love Ambassador Kemal Okem’s explanation to the Jerusalem Post:

Okem said that he did not send out individual invitations, and that Salah came as part of a general invitation he sent to various Muslim communities in the country.
 
“It’s an Iftar dinner, like the Shabbat dinners you have, just a private, casual dinner with all different kinds of people, who come, eat their dinner and go – to mark Ramadan,” he said. “That was the whole message, Ramadan Kareem. Peace and well-being for the people, that was the message.”
Salah has previously been convicted of providing funds for Hamas, was aboard the Mavi Marmara flotilla to Gaza, was convicted of incitement, and created a legal mess in the UK, when — despite being banned from entering Britain for fostering hatred — he managed to pass through immigration at London’s Heathrow Airport.

4. Sign our petition demanding fairness and accountability from the Washington Post, which slammed Israel in a one-sided series of articles about the Six Day War’s anniversary.

5. BDS vs. Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman is a natural target for BDS, which cannot allow any Israeli success.

6. Jewish Conspiracy Behind US-Saudi Arms Deal? Columnists are entitled to their opinions. They’re not entitled to use true facts to proffer false conclusions.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Ahead of her upcoming visit to Israel, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley sparked buzz with a Washington Post op-ed denouncing the UN Human Rights Council. Haley is scheduled to address the UNHRC in Geneva before arriving in Israel. Backstory at the Daily Telegraph.

Amb. Nikki Haley
US Amb. Nikki Haley briefing journalists, April 3, 2017

• A Gaza reporter who captured a Hamas execution on camera ‘is now hiding.’ According to the International Business Times, the video, which was partially streamed live on Facebook, was filmed not by Hamas but by the Gaza Now News Agency.

Mustafa Ayach, General Manager of Gaza Now news agency, confirmed to IBTimes UK that one of the agency reporters took the video and uploaded it to Facebook. He added the footage was then taken down and cannot be shown due to security concerns.
 
“The reporter who took the video is now hiding in Gaza as he fears he could be arrested by Hamas security forces,” claimed Ayach, who has been living in Austria since 2015.
 
“Correspondents in Gaza are under threat,” he continued. “We call on the international community to help us.”
 
Ayach has applied for asylum in Austria after fleeing Gaza due to alleged persecution by Hamas security forces, due to his reports.
• Make what you will of the tea leaves from PA official Jibril Rajoub’s latest comments he now denies making to Israeli media:

“We understand that the wall he [U.S. President Donald Trump] visited is sacred to the Jews and ultimately it has to remain under Jewish sovereignty,” Rajoub said on Channel 2’s “Meet the Press.”
 
“There is no argument over this. Obviously, it’s a holy place for Jews,” he added.
Rajoub went on to assert that Temple Mount, however, is Palestinian. More background at the Times of Israel.

• Netanyahu left for Western Africa, where he will address the Economic Community of West African States summit in Liberia. More at the Jerusalem Post.


• New York Times: Israel’s doomsday plan for the 1967 war was to detonate an atomic bomb atop a mountain in the Egyptian Sinai “intimidate Egypt and surrounding Arab states — Syria, Iraq and Jordan — into backing off.” But Deputy Minister and historian Michael Oren, who wrote his own notable book on the Six Day War, rejected the Times report saying the claim “doesn’t hold hold water” and is based on one single source.

• Despite emphatic campaign promises, Trump signed a presidential waiver delaying the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Take your pick of Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel or Haaretz coverage.

• The Trump administration is considering drawing up a “principles paper” to serve as a basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, reported Haaretz.

• The Palestinians have paid terrorists $1 billion in past 4 years, according to a Knesset briefing:
Kuperwasser also told the committee that PA claims that the payments to terrorists’ families are social welfare benefits to the needy are false. The Palestinians’ own budgetary documents, he said, “clearly state that these are salaries and not welfare payments.”
• Resisting boycott calls in order to have ‘voice heard,’ Ai Weiwei unveils Jerusalem exhibit

• Denmark’s foreign ministry is halting aid to Palestinian non-governmental organizations while it reviews the recipients’ activities in BDS and glorifying terrorists. Meanwhile, the Palestinian town of Burqa refuses to rename the women’s center at the heart of the controversy. The Dalal al-Mughrabi Women’s Community Center honors one of the terrorists involved in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre.

• Israel HaYom: Pacific island nation Vanuatu recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

• Hours before the film was due to debut, Lebanon banned “Wonder Woman,” though a sneak preview managed to go on as scheduled before the restriction kicked in.

• UN chief: Denial of Israel’s right to exist is anti-Semitism.

• Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon was elected as one of 21 vice presidents of the UN General Assembly. Times of Israel coverage.

Around the World
• Good news: The European Parliament endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism.

• In an interview with Rolling Stone, Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke unloaded on Roger Waters and the anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS). Radiohead, a British alternative rock band, has been under steady pressure from BDS over a July concert in July.

The kind of dialogue that they want to engage in is one that’s black or white. I have a problem with that. It’s deeply distressing that they choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public. It’s deeply disrespectful to assume that we’re either being misinformed or that we’re so retarded we can’t make these decisions ourselves. I thought it was patronizing in the extreme. It’s offensive and I just can’t understand why going to play a rock show or going to lecture at a university [is a problem to them].
 
Thom Yorke
• Tough few days for Jeremy Corbyn. In a newly resurfaced radio interview from 2010, the now UK Labour leader described described Hamas as ‘serious and hardworking’ and called for trade deal with Israel to be suspended. And per Guido Fawkes, on two occasions, Corbyn shared a platform with convicted PFLP terrorist Lela Khaled, who participated in two airline hijackings.

Last but not least, Corbynistas trolled a Jewish journalist, Emma Barnett with anti-Semitic tweets after she demolished Corbyn during an interview about the cost of a Labour plan to extend free childcare.

All that would explain what seems like an evergreen headline in the BBC this weekend:

Election 2017: Corbyn ‘failing to grasp anti-Semitism’

• Al Jazeera tweeted — then deleted — an anti-Semitic cartoon about climate change. Story and screengrab via the Washington Free Beacon.

Commentary/Analysis
• After the New York Times eliminated the public editor position — among other employee buyouts — outgoing public editor Liz Spayd filed her last column:

Having the role was a sign of institutional integrity, and losing it sends an ambiguous signal: Is the leadership growing weary of such advice or simply searching for a new model? We’ll find out soon enough.
Worth reading was Kelly McBride, while Andrew Seaman‘s tweet summed up my headspace:

Paratroopers at the Western Wall, 1967

• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels about the the Six Day War anniversary . . .
– Dr. Max Singer: The over-dramatization of Israel’s “dilemma”
– Bret Stephens: Six Days and 50 years of war
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Arab leaders did plan to eliminate Israel in Six-Day War
– Aaron David Miller: The myths about 1967 that just won’t die
– Daniel Pipes: 6 days and 50 years
– Asaf Romirowsky: Nakba: The source of Arab-Israeli conflict
– Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror: The 50-year unanswered question
– Yaakov Katz: How Charles de Gaulle fathered Israel’s tech revolution 50 years ago
– Sever Plocker: The prolonged birth pangs of a Palestinian state
– David Harris: 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War: Why history matters
– New York Daily News (staff-ed): 50 years and six days: How the Mideast has and has not changed

• Here’s what else I’m reading . . .

– Wall St. Journal (staff-ed): The Trump Jerusalem waiver (click via Twitter)
– Eli Lake: Trump left the door open for a Jerusalem embassy
– Prof. Eugene Kontorovich: What Trump not signing a Jerusalem embassy waiver would really mean
– Shlomo Avineri: ‘New dawn’ Trump is not the little ray of sunshine Israel needs
– Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: Israel’s goodwill gestures send wrong messages
– Amb. Daniel Shapiro: Trump’s international debacles spell trouble for Israel
– New York Post (staff-ed): Trump’s postponed promise on Israel
Featured image: CC BY-ND Jojo Bombardo; Haley via UN Photo/Mark Garten; Yorke via YouTube/Radiohead;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05292017-wonder-woman/
Defying BDS, Lebanese Cinemas To Screen Wonder Woman
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Despite BDS efforts, cinemas throughout Lebanon will be screening Wonder Woman, which stars Israeli actress Gal Gadot. Ynet writes:

The campaign against Wonder Woman began in April, when the movement sent a letter to the Bureau for the Boycott of Israel within Lebanon’s Ministry of Economy and Trade. The letter noted that Gadot is the former beauty queen of Israel, who served in the IDF and publicly supported Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Since then, however, Lebanese filmmakers have promoted the film and called on the public to buy tickets in advance.
Gal Gadot
Israeli actress Gal Gadot

2. The Israeli cabinet held a special meeting in the Western Wall tunnels to mark the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification. Ministers approved plans to make the Western Wall more accessible with A) an NIS 200 million cable car and B) an NIS 50 million handicap-friendly elevator and underground passageway between the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and the holy site.

Also approved was an NIS 177 million plan to better join eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods to the municipal sewage and garbage collection systems. Ynet notes:

. . . 33 kilometers of sewage infrastructure will be built, the existing sewage system will be upgraded, garbage cans and garbage trucks will be purchased and set up to collect waste . . .
 
The plan references the needs of all Arab neighborhoods, inside and outside the security fence, but at this stage, it will be only be implemented in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem inside the security fence. The Arab neighborhoods outside the fence, which belong to the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, will be dealt with in a separate program.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the meeting in the tunnels a provocation.

3. Iran is going to bankroll pro-Assad militias in Syria. Voice of America explains that this is another step in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards raising its influence in Syria.

Iran has long expressed a desire to command a unified army in the region, particularly in Syria, and its growing power in Syria and Iraq is causing unease in Western capitals. In an interview with the Mashregh news agency last August, Mohammad Ali Falaki, an IRGC leader, announced formation of a unified army in Syria which appears to have come to loose fruition.
4. HonestReporting’s week-long mission to Israel wrapped up today with a visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for briefings by Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, Director of Digital Diplomacy DJ Schneeweiss and spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon.

Later in the day, they heard from Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren and Professor Eugene Kontorovich, among others, before this evening’s closing dinner.

Visit our mission web site to find out more about next year’s special mission honoring Israel’s 70th birthday.

In the News
• Looks like the Mahmoud Abbas and the PA made more concessions to hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners than any of the parties involved, including Israel. Emerging details reported by Ynet indicate that Abbas wanted the hunger strike resolved before Muslim holy month of Ramadan “out of fear of significant provocations and demonstrations.”

Ynet has learned that Abbas was pressured by various Palestinian officials to bring about a change in the situation, finally agreeing for the PA to finance the cost of one of the two visits per month prisoners are entitled to with their families.
 
The cost is estimated to be between $6-7 million per year and was previously financed by the Red Cross, which cut the program following budgetary constraints.
• Sinai Bedouin accuse Hamas of collaborating with Islamic State.

• Israel tested a rocket propulsion system but offered few details about its nature. Haaretz reports that the test was planned in advance.

• A 14-year-old Jewish boy who goes to school in Germany described to London’s Sunday Times the bullying he deals with after letting slip to Muslim classmates that he’s Jewish. According to the Times, about three-quarters of the kids enrolled in Berlin’s Friedenau Gemeinschaftsschule are from immigrant families.

Ferdinand, 14, who was born in London to a British mother and a German father, told The Sunday Times he feared for his life after being repeatedly kicked and punched by students of Middle Eastern and Turkish origin. One of them even threatened to shoot him with a mock gun he believed was real.
 
The case is under investigation by prosecutors and has added to soul-searching in Germany over the rise of anti-semitism in immigrant communities. It was cited in a damning report by a government advisory body that recommended the creation of an ombudsman to tackle the issue.
The parents have since transferred their son to another school. The European Jewish Press and New York Post also picked up on the Times’ story.
Atef Bseiso

• UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is facing fresh condemnation from within his own party amid revelations that he attended a wreath-laying ceremony for a Palestinian terror chief in 2014. The Daily Telegraph explains:
Less than a year before becoming Labour leader, Mr Corbyn visited the cemetery in Tunisia where members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation are buried, including Atef Bseiso, who was directly involved in the Munich attack, prompting outrage from Jewish groups.
Bseiso was assassinated in Paris in 1992. The PLO blamed the Mossad, though others have suggested Bseiso was killed by the Abu Nidal Group.

• North Miami Beach Jewish school evacuated after bomb threat.

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

– Michael Oren: The war that made the Mideast
– Thane Rosenbaum: The Six Day War that lasted 50 years
– Bassam Tawil: Abbas immediately breaks promises to Trump
– Ronen Bergman: If Russia recognizes Jerusalem, why can’t other countries do so?
– Moshe Arens: What makes Arab leaders pragmatic?
– Annika Hernroth-Rothstein: Better safe ?
– Jonathan Spyer: Why eastern Syria is essential for containing Iran

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Tony Walker.

Featured image: CC BY-NC Marines; Gadot via YouTube/Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon;; Munich terrorist via Wikimedia Commons;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05282017-hunger-strike/
Palestinian Prisoners End Hunger Strike — For What?
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. Palestinian prisoners ended their hunger strike. This came after the International Red Cross agreed to resume facilitating an extra family visit each month which had been called off for budgetary reasons. Although Israel itself made no concessions, the Palestinians claimed a victory. The hunger strike, which reached 40 days, ended just before the start of the Islamic month of Ramadan. The Times of Israel explains:

The prisons service said the prisoners would now get an extra family visit per month, one of the prisoner demands that is administered solely by the Red Cross.
 
The Red Cross had reduced the visits from two to one per month about a year ago because they said they lacked the funds to pay for them and most times no relatives were showing up. The Palestinian Authority has agreed to pay for the new visits.
 
Israel said none of the other Palestinian demands had been met.
All that explains why the Times of London gets special recognition for this bungled headline:

2. Norway demanded the PA return money it provided for a women’s center after learning it was named after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. She’s a Palestinian poster girl for terror, for her participation in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, in which 38 Israeli civilians — including 13 children — were killed.

“The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms. Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way. We will not accept the use of Norwegian aid funding for such purposes,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende said in a statement.
 
Brende said that Norway had been unaware of the decision to name the center after Mughrabi. He demanded that the country’s name be removed from the center and that the funds it gave for construction be returned.

3. Late Thursday afternoon, Hamas executed three Palestinian “collaborators” it accused of assassinating one of the terror group’s commanders. The execution was partially streamed live on Facebook, which caught The Guardian‘s attention.

The broadcast on the page of Gaza Now, a local news outlet, raises further questions over Facebook’s ability to moderate violent content at a time when its moderation procedures are under scrutiny following leaks of files on how the company deals with controversial and offensive material . . .
 
In the footage, only distant people, moving vehicles and what appears to be a gallows covered in black cloth are visible. The video appeared to show the same screened gallows structure seen in still photographs taken during its construction.
 
A recording of the live broadcast, which lasted about 30 minutes, was later taken down.
4. Washington Post Slams Israel, Ignores Ethics: The Washington Post throws professional balance out the window.

5. Today, HonestReporting’s mission to Israel spent the day in southern Israel. The itinerary included a VIP tour of an Air Force base and an exclusive look at a new cyber-park showcasing Israeli high-tech and entrepreneurship.

Visit our mission web site to find out more about next year’s special mission honoring Israel’s 70th birthday.

Israel and the Palestinians
• The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs took the most in-depth look at PA salaries for terrorists. Thorough and well-researched, the JCPA examines the legal issues, the ideological context, the attitudes of international donors, and what can be done.

The PA pays directly and, as of 2014, partly through the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), about 1.1 billion shekels (around $300 million) every year as salaries to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails, continuing after they are released, and to the families of dead terrorists and other Palestinians who died fighting against Zionism.
 
These “incentives to terror” salaries appear clearly in the PA budget. They amount to seven percent of the Palestinian budget and more than 20 percent of the annual foreign aid to the PA.
• Why is the UN’s World Health Organization hiding a positive report on Israel while adopting a Syrian-backed censure of the Jewish state? According to UN Watch, here’s what the country that drops barrel bombs on its own civilians pulled off:

The resolution, which will cost $10 million to implement, renews the annual naming and shaming of Israel by renewing a special agenda item on the country at next year’s session, as well as mandating a report by WHO’s director-general, measures of scrutiny applied to no other country.

• Are the Gulf states coming out of the closet regarding thawing ties with Israel? At the swearing in of Ecuador’s new president, Druze cabinet minister Ayoub Kara (formerly minister without portfolio, now communications minister) tweeted photos of himself “with representatives from the Palestinian Authority along with delegates from Oman, Qatar and Yemen and other Arab nations as well as the prime minister of the Sahrawi Republic of southern Morocco, Abdelkader Taleb Omar.”

Tweets one, two, three, four and five and are all in Hebrew.

Around the World
• Copy editors at the Daily Telegraph were asleep at the wheel this weekend. A slideshow of the world’s 20 oldest cities rightly included Damascus, but wrongly illustrated it with a photo of Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. The Telegraph’s list also included Jerusalem and Jericho.

• Tablet takes a closer look at how one of the most acclaimed philanthropic institutions, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, provided both money and legitimacy to groups pushing for boycotts of Israel.

• The Nevada state legislature passed an anti-BDS law.

• Since hunger strikes are in the news:

French photojournalist detained in Turkey ends hunger strike

• This PayPal account under investigation sure checked a lot boxes in terms of hostility towards Israel and the Jewish people. According to the Jerusalem Post:

The US-based online payment company PayPal launched an investigation last week into its account with the German neo-Nazi organization Der Dritte Weg (The Third Way), a pro-Hezbollah and pro-Assad regime entity that also supports the convicted Holocaust denier Horst Mahler.
Commentary/Analysis
• Hey Fadwa Barghouti, care to be more specific about why your husband, Marwan, is in prison? In case you forgot, he was convicted of murder.

We’re talking about an attack on a Tel Aviv seafood restaurant which killed Salim Barakat, Yosef Haybi and Eli Dahan, a drive by shooting at a Givat Zeev gas station which killed Yoela Chen, and another drive by shooting in Maale Adumim which killed a Greek Orthodox monk Fr. Georgios Tsibouktzakis.

Diana Buttu

• I’m all for reforming the corrupt kleptocracy known as the Palestinian Authority, but former PLO negotiator Diana Buttu’s ire is off the charts in this New York Times op-ed:
As time went on, it became clear that the authority’s budget and its priorities were primarily geared toward ensuring that Palestinians remained one of the most surveilled and controlled people on earth. In effect, the Palestinian Authority served as a subcontractor for the occupying Israeli military . . .
 
The raison d’être of the Palestinian Authority today is not to liberate Palestine; it is to keep Palestinians silent and quash dissent while Israel steals land, demolishes Palestinian homes, and builds and expands settlements. Instead of becoming a sovereign state, the Palestinian Authority has become a proto-police state, a virtual dictatorship, endorsed and funded by the international community.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Avi Issacharoff: Ending strike after 40 days, Barghouti is now Abbas’s undisputed heir
– Dr. Reuven Berko: No honor among prisoners
– Amos Harel: After averting hunger strike, Gaza crisis looms large
– Rabbi Jonathan Miller: 50 years after the Six Day War, we shouldn’t lament Israel’s power to protect itself
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: What is the West Bank’s legal status?
– Ruthie Blum: Manchester, Abbas and evil losers
– Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Trump, terror — and Jerusalem
– Charles Krauthammer: Why Middle East peace starts in Saudi Arabia
– David Suissa: UCLA professor: What’s wrong with Jews being a minority in Israel?
– Selin Nasi: Building Israeli-Turkish peace and partnership through joint investments
– Christopher Booker: If you think a ‘moderate’ has won in Iran, think again


Featured image: CC BY-SA Michael Coghlan; Buttu via YouTube/CGTN America;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05252017-west-bank/
US Pushing Israel to Transfer Parts of West Bank to PA Rule?
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. Is the US pushing Israel to transfer parts of West Bank to PA administrative rule? Here’s what Israeli media is reporting:

Despite a series of economic incentives approved on Sunday by the Israeli cabinet, the US wants to see greater concessions to the Palestinian Authority and views the recent measures as insufficient, Channel 10 reported Wednesday.
 
Specifically they have asked for areas in the northern West Bank to be transferred from Area C to Area B, according to the report.
 
Under the Oslo Accords, Area C of the West Bank (60%, where most of the settlements are located, and some 150,000 Palestinians live) is under full Israeli administrative and military control, while in Area B (22%), administrative control is the responsibility of the PA while the IDF is in charge of security. Area A (18%, encompassing the major Palestinian cities) is under the full administrative and military control of the Palestinian Authority.

2. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be considering a plan to separate eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods from Israel, according to the Jerusalem Post:

Most of these neighborhoods, it is worthwhile noting, were never in the city’s jurisdiction area throughout the city’s history.
 
As far as it is understood, according to Berko’s plan, Palestinians would eventually receive municipal responsibility over those east Jerusalem neighborhoods. That responsibility would include municipal services, education, health, welfare, etc. The next step after that would be for the state to revoke Israeli citizenship from the residents of those neighborhoods, and thus save the country hundreds of millions of shekels.

3. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman confirmed Israel is revising the way it shares intelligence with the US but insisted the cooperation between the two countries will continue at a high level. This comes in response to reports that Trump inappropriately shared sensitive Israeli intelligence with Russian diplomats.

4. HonestReporting’s mission continued today with a visit to the Herzl Museum, a briefing at city hall with Jerusalem council member Fleur Hassan-Nahum, a walking tour of the Old City and Western Wall tunnels, and a buffet lunch at HonestReporting’s International Headquarters.

Visit our mission web site to find out more about next year’s special mission honoring Israel’s 70th birthday.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Israel to reduce electricity supply to Gaza over NIS 2 billion ($530 million) in unpaid bills.

• Israel and the Vatican are in talks over a papal visit to the Holy Land.

• Terror victim’s mother to UN: My son’s murderer gets payments from the PA.

• The Associated Press shows its possible for boilerplate background to fairly touch all the bases of nuance about the significance of the Temple Mount to both Jews and Muslims.

The Old City is home to the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, and the adjacent hilltop compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, the spot where the biblical Temples once stood. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Jerusalem.
 
But for Palestinians, there is little to celebrate. They claim east Jerusalem as their capital, and revere the same hilltop compound as the “Noble Sanctuary.” This compound, home to the Al Aqsa Mosque and gold-topped Dome of the Rock, is Islam’s third-holiest site.
Temple Mount
Photo by Yossi Zamir/Flash 90 with additions by HonestReporting

• Estonia’s foreign minister denounced BDS, calls Israel ‘a friend and partner.’

• Construction of a contentious security wall around a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon is nearing completion. Work carried out by the Lebanese army was briefly halted in the face of opposition from residents of the Ain al-Hilweh camp, located next to the coastal city of Sidon.

The move was to maintain security in the camp, which has been rocked by clashes, most recently in April. The nearly six days of continuous clashes left at least 10 dead and over 50 wounded.
You can imagine the outrage if Israel built a wall around a refugee camp . . .

• A fake Israel story exposes real tensions between Qatar and Gulf.

Commentary/Analysis
Dolphinarium
Israeli security personnel evacuating a victim of the 2001 bombing of Tel Aviv’s Dolphinarium night club .

• Worth reading: Tanya Weiz, a teenage victim of a 2001 Palestinian suicide bombing, shares her thoughts on this week’s deadly Manchester attack in a New York Times op-ed.
It’s like I have two lives. One before the bombing and one after. I really do feel that I was reborn that day. Every time there’s a “tekes” (a memorial ceremony) on June 1, we survivors, many of us good friends, wish one another happy birthday.
 
The terrorists try to paralyze us with fear and make us weaker, but it made me the opposite. I became kinder, more grateful, more attentive to the smallest details of life, and, yes, more resilient.
 
I try my best not to focus on the horror of the attack, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about it, and every time I see an incident on the news it feels surreal: I can’t believe that I went through it. And that now I’m one of the people sitting on the couch watching the news of children murdered, this time by the Islamic State.
• Ira Rifkin wonders why foreign reporters “quote Haaretz big time when the left-leaning Israeli newspaper reflects a small minority’s views.” He’s expanding on a recent Shmuel Rosner column.

As with everything else in life, it’s best when reading the news to consider the source.
 
That’s even more the case in this age of down-and-dirty online – not to mention often lightly edited, if edited at all – news. And no, I’m not saying this is particularly Haaretz’ problem.
 
What I am saying is that it’s misleading reporting when foreign journalists present Haaretz as an influential player in contemporary Israeli politics.

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

– Einat Wilf: Why Jerusalem would be better off divided
– Shireen Qudosi: The world needs to drive out destructive fantasies about Jerusalem
– Yaron Friedman: Can the Saudi weapons pose a threat to Israel?
– Alan Dershowitz: Terrorism persists because it works
– Amb. Daniel Shapiro: Don’t be the one who says ‘no’ to Trump
– David Horovitz: For now, Trump’s peacemaking approach is all unfounded optimism
– Neri Zilber: Trump’s flying circus and peacemaking medicine show leaves Israel wanting more

Featured image: CC BY PACAF; Dolphinarium via YouTube/AP Archive; Haaretz via Wikimedia Commons;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05242017-facebook-holocauast/
Documents Reveal How Facebook Flouts Holocaust-Denial Laws
Israel Daily News Stream5 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Turns out Facebook has been instructing its moderators to flout Holocaust-denial laws in a number of countries. The Guardian obtained internal internal documents from the social media giant that raise a lot of questions:

One 16-page training manual explains Facebook will only hide or remove Holocaust denial content in four countries – France, Germany, Israel and Austria. The document says this is not on grounds of taste, but because the company fears it might get sued.
 
“We believe our geo-blocking policy balances our belief in free expression with the practical need to respect local laws in certain sovereign nations in order to remain unblocked and avoid legal liability. We will only use geo-blocking when a country has taken sufficient steps to demonstrate that the local legislation permits censorship in that specific case,” it says.
 
“Some 14 countries have legislation on their books prohibiting the expression of claims that the volume of death and severity of the Holocaust is overestimated. Less than half the countries with these laws actually pursue it. We block on report only in those countries that actively pursue the issue with us.”
Other Facebook documents obtained by The Guardian zero in on moderators struggling to deal with online extremism, bullied children, “sextortion,” and more.

2. Dartmouth Professor N. Bruce Dutu withdrew from consideration for a senior faculty position amid the furor over his support for BDS and an academic boycott of Israel in particular. Details and background at The Dartmouth and Legal Insurrection.

See also the campus Students for Israel group’s open letter to administrators, written before Duthu pulled his hat from the ring.

Duthu
Professor N. Bruce Duthu withdrew from a senior faculty position over his BDS ties.

3. Following up on President Donald Trump’s Mideast visit, envoy Jason Greenblatt is due to arrive in Israel on Thursday to follow up on efforts to restart peace talks. Meanwhile, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is due to separately visit Israel in early June.

4. HonestReporting’s mission continued today as participants learned about the evolution of Mideast warfare from experts like military analyst IDF Major (Res.) Elliot Chodoff and Maj. Simcha Shore, newly retired head of Israel’s drone program.

The day included a tour the Armored Corps Memorial Site and Museum at Latrun, and a visit to Tel Faher, site of a heavy infantry battle in the Six-Day War.

Visit our mission web site to find out more about next year’s special mission honoring Israel’s 70th birthday.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Czech parliament called for sanctions against UNESCO over anti-Israel bias and urged Prague to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Times of Israel reports. The non-binding resolution was passed on the occasion of Jerusalem Day.

• Three Palestinian suspects were arrested over last week’s near-lynching of an Israeli near the West Bank village of Huwara. Israeli security forces had previously arrested a Palestinian who is believed to have used his ambulance to block the Israeli’s car to prevent him from escaping a mob of around 200 people. Ynet coverage.

Qatar News Agency• Don’t you hate it when this happens to you?

Qatar said Wednesday its official state news agency had been hacked by an ‘unknown entity’, and subsequently carried false remarks attributed to the country’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, including a statement that his country’s relations with Israel were “good.” . . .
 
According to translations in the Hebrew-language press, the emir was quoted telling the Saudi-based al-Arabiya that Qatar’s ties to Israel were “good” and that he hoped to play a part in brokering a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. He also made positive statements about Hamas, considered a terror group by Israel and the US, calling it the “official representative of Palestinians.”
• Why can’t Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cut off the stipends to terrorists and their families now? According to the Jerusalem Post, his popularity is too low and the hunger-striking prisoners enjoy too much acclaim.

• Palestinians were underwhelmed with the presidential visit to Bethlehem, pointing out to the Los Angeles Times that Trump only spent about an hour in Bethlehem, didn’t visit the Church of the Nativity or make any reference to the two-state solution.

In Bethlehem, some Palestinians joked that the visit’s main achievement was that the municipality had cleaned the streets beforehand . . .
• It’s only an outrage when Israel does this: Egypt debates its own “muezzin bill” drafted to fight noise pollution during the upcoming month of Ramadan.

• French photographer Mathias Depardon and Reporters Without Borders are going to learn that hunger strikes only get international solidarity when the prisoners are Palestinian terrorists held in Israel.

Turkish authorities said they arrested Depardon for working without a valid press card, but have kept in detention rather than expel him despite a deportation order that was ordered earlier in May, AFP reports.

I hope Depardon and press freedom groups don’t hold their breath waiting for salt water challenges or other expressions of solidarity from people like South African anti-apartheid figures, UK students or 1,500 Moroccans.


• Jerusalem, by the numbers, based on the Jerusalem Post.

– 266,000: overallpopulation in 1967
– 865,700: overall population in 2015
– 197,700: Jewish population in 1967
– 542,000: Jewish population in 2015
– 174%: growth of Jewish population
– 68,000: Arab population in 1967
– 323,700: Arab population in 2015
– 372%: growth of Arab population
– 38.1 sq. km: area of municipal Jerusalem on June 5, 1967
– 125.1 sq. km: area of municipal Jerusalem today

Jerusalem collage
Images by Flash90

• Israel advocates are relieved after a labor union at a Canadian university failed to pass pro-BDS referendum.

Commentary/Analysis
• MEMRI spotted a notable column by Saudi journalist Mash’al Al-Sudairi telling Palestinian leaders they have missed too many opportunities to resolve the conflict with Israel, urging them to unify and make peace.

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

– David Horovitz: Simply by saying he loves it and stands with it, Trump wins over endlessly criticized Israel
– Barak Ravid: Trump’s Israel love offensive might carry a hefty price tag
– Gil Troy: Trump celebrated Jerusalem. Will you?
– Rosie Gray: Trump leaves Israel pushing peace, but staying vague
– Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror: Turkey’s rants, raves, and ramifications
– Yoram Ettinger: The 1967 war’s impact

Featured image: Hadas Parush/Flash90; Facebook CC0 Pixabay; Duthu via YouTube/Dartmouth;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05232017-trump-visit/
Trump Wraps Up Whirlwind Israel Visit
Israel Daily News Stream5 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. President Donald Trump’s concluded his visit to the Holy Land, meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance center, and giving a keynote address (see video or transcript) at the Israel Museum before a red carpet send-off at Ben Gurion Airport.

Shortly before this roundup was published, Air Force One departed for Rome, for the the European leg of the first foreign trip of Trump’s presidency.

The Times of Israel and Haaretz live-blogged it all. Details below.


2. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested that information Trump divulged to Russian diplomats may have come from both Israeli and Jordanian intelligence.

Such a theory could explain why there are reports of anger about the leak emanating from both Israel and Jordan.
By the way, Trump raised eyebrows at the end of his joint press conference with Netanyahu, when — apparently unprompted — he blurted out to reporters, “I never mentioned the word ‘Israel’” to the Russians.


3. Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last night. Most recent updates reported 22 killed 22 and 59 injured with many of the victims being children making this Britain’s deadliest terror attack since the 7/7 London bombings of 2005.

British police say they know the identity of the bomber and have also made an arrest. Many of the victims were children. The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and CNN update what’s known so far.

4. HonestReporting’s 2017 mission kicked off yesterday. Find out more about next year’s HR mission honoring Israel’s 70th birthday.


Israel and the Palestinians
• Iran was a big part of the president’s talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More at the Daily Telegraph and Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter).

Meanwhile, the Associated Press examines just what the Trump administration’s policy on the Islamic Republic is.

• During a joint press conference in Bethlehem, Trump told Abbas that “peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded.” Later at the Israel Museum, Netanyahu said:

“Abbas condemned the horrific attack in Manchester, but if the attacker had been Palestinian, the bomber’s family would have received a stipend from the Palestinian Authority – that’s law and that must change.”
• The White House put ‘Jerusalem, Israel’ on its website, but the reference disappeared later in the day. Avi Mayer tweeted this.


• The Washington Post expands on the significance of Trump’s direct flight from Riyadh to Tel Aviv. It’s not exactly the first:

Other high-level U.S. political flights have also been made from Saudi Arabia to Israel. In 1998, Vice President Al Gore flew from Israel to a Saudi air base near Jiddah during a trip to the region, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew from Saudi Arabia to Israel in 2007. In neither case was the route taken noted widely by officials or reporters.
 
This time, Trump’s route has been loudly promoted. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was among those who praised Trump’s journey. “I hope one day an Israeli prime minister will be able to fly from Tel Aviv to Riyadh,” he wrote on Twitter.
Air Force One
Air Force One arriving at Ben Gurion Airport on May 22, 2017

• A Palestinian stabbed a Border Police officer in Netanya this morning. And yesterday, Israeli Border Police officers shot and killed a Palestinian trying to stab them in eastern Jerusalem yesterday afternoon.

• Details are scarce, but a rocket fired from the Sinai this morning landed in an undisclosed open area in southern Israel.

• The IDF confirmed that one of its aerial drones, a Skylark UAV, crashed in Southern Lebanon yesterday and is investigating:

There did not appear to be a risk that classified information could be retrieved from the device, the army said.
 
It was the fourth time this year that an Israel Defense Forces Skylark drone crashed. Earlier this month, a senior IDF official told The Times of Israel that the incidents were not the result of a shared problem, but were caused by a mix of human and technical error.
Commentary/Analysis
• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels on the Trump Mideast Tour 2017 . . .

– Spengler: The Manchester Arena and the Western Wall
– Barak Ravid: In Israel, Trump makes the word ‘peace’ great again
– David Horovitz: Trump at the Western Wall, a carefully calibrated act of respect
– Yaakov Katz: Making history is a good start but not enough to make peace
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Abbas’ moment of truth
– Moshe Dann: The two-state tango is over
– Raphael Ahren: Bereft of meat, Trump declarations leave Israel with much to chew on
– David Brinn: All pomp and no substance in Trump’s Israel visit
– Benny Avni: Trump & the promise (and pitfalls) of Mideast peace

Trump Netanyahu
President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

– Rosie Gray: Trump goes after ‘the ultimate deal’
– Dr. Gabi Avital: Charting a new course
– Gregg Carlstrom: Stage one of Trump’s visit: Get Israeli and Palestinian leaders talking
– Dov Lipman: From one American to another: Tell it like it is, Mr. President
– Dr. Col. (res.) Moshe Elad: Bracing for the Trump years
– Daily Telegraph (staff-ed) Donald Trump is right to be sceptical of Iran’s capacity for reform
– Christian Science Monitor (staff-ed) Trump’s fresh approach to the Middle East
– New York Post (staff-ed): Trump’s inspiring Middle East firsts

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

– Eli Lake: Iranians re-elect a fake reformer in a fake election
– Meron Medzini: The international media and the Six-Day War

• Last but not least, Fisk’s being Fisk again.

Featured image: via Israel Government Press Office; Air Force One screen grab via Washington Post; speech screen grab from Channel 10;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05222017-holy-sites/
Trump Visits Jerusalem Holy Sites
Israel Daily News Stream2 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. US President Donald Trump arrived in Israel for a whirlwind 28 hours in the Holy Land. The Times of Israel, Haaretz and i24 News are all live-blogging.

After a welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, Trump was whisked off to Jerusalem where he met with President Reuven Rivlin and visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Western Wall. The president was also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the evening.

The Old City was in lockdown as Trump visited the holy sites.

2. In Riyadh, Trump gave a speech (video or transcript) urging the Arab world to drive out Islamic extremism. Unfortunately, Trump had little to say about Israel or Jewish-Arab rapprochement. The Times of Israel asks: Did Trump miss an opportunity?

The true toll of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and so many others, must be counted not only in the number of dead. It must also be counted in generations of vanished dreams.
Hamas objected to being described as a terror group.


3. A number of Israeli officials said they’re not concerned about Trump’s massive arms deal with Saudi Arabia, telling the Times of Israel it might even be good for the Jewish state.

Amidror said that beefing up Saudi Arabia’s military against Iran, a common enemy with Israel, might increase the Saudis’ “self confidence” and their readiness to expand their engagement with the Jewish state in an anti-Iran alliance.
 
“Who knows? Maybe it will lead to a different relationship in the Middle East.”
US Air Force
A formation of F-15C Eagles in 2016.

4. Comments and the Roar of the Crowd: HR Complicit in Trump’s Intel Leak? If HonestReporting’s Israel Daily News Stream is to be relevant to its readers, we have to be frank about what’s happening and why.

5. Repeat Offender: The Guardian and “Judaism’s Holiest Site”: Not only is it a factual error to call the Western Wall Judaism’s holiest site, in the week where we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War, the media and the world must understand Jewish ties to Jerusalem and its holy sites.

Israel and the Palestinians
• The Israeli cabinet approved a package of economic measures benefiting Palestinians yesterday in a goodwill gesture at Trump’s request. Among the measures approved were
permits for thousands of Palestinian homes, building two West Bank industrial zones, easing passage for Palestinian laborers at crossing point near Tulkarem, and keeping the Allenby Bridge border crossing open 24 hours.

• Jerusalem Post: By visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Trump enters a sensitive tug-of-war between the different Christian factions responsible for the site and enters uncharted waters of protocol.

Trump may just want a tour of the holiest church in the Christian world, but these groups take seriously every step and handshake and who is represented so that each church’s rights and privileges are maintained and they are properly represented.
• Jonathan Pollard to Netanyahu: Don’t forget me in your talks with Trump.

• Say what, Mr. Secretary of State?

• The White House may skip a prayer service at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity “because of the presence of an exhibit placed outside the church, expressing solidarity with Palestinian prisoners serving sentences in Israeli jails.” Or Trump may skip it because the event was only tentatively booked on the president’s itinerary. More at the Jerusalem Post.

Don’t be surprised if more last-minute changes and cancellations pop up. Reuters reports Trump showed signs of fatigue in Riyadh.

Speaking of prisoners, Haaretz updates the latest on the hunger-strike:

The Israel Prison Service on Sunday evacuated some 60 hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners to hospitals because their medical condition had deteriorated, while 592 other hunger strikers have recently been moved for observation to infirmaries set up in the prisons.
• Trump wasn’t the only US VIP in Israel right now. Ynet reports Mike Huckabee paid a visit to Joseph’s Tomb, in Nablus, accompanied by settler leaders.

The former Arkansas governor and close associate of Trump decries fact Jews have to visit the tomb, under PA control, ‘in the dead of night, under armed guard, with the smell of tear gas in the air, burning tires along the route.’
• According to Lebanese media reports picked up by MEMRI, Hezbollah has stationed an elite unit in southern Lebanon in the area of Shebaa Farms.

Around the World
• The Daily Telegraph reports that UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has had a 10-year association with “a cabal of Holocaust deniers.”

An investigation by The Telegraph shows Mr Corbyn was considered to be a “stalwart” supporter of an anti-Israel campaign group Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR) for several years after its organisers were exposed publicly for their extreme anti-Semitic views.
 
While there is no suggestion Mr Corbyn shares their views, his association raises serious questions about his judgement.
• Berlin’s Social Democratic Party declared BDS anti-Semitic.

• More anti-Semitic fliers found in Bozeman in second incident this month.

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

– Orly Azoulay: A weakened president on an impossible mission
– Barak Ravid: Trump plans to shower Israel with love, but it might be a honey trap for Netanyahu
– Raphael Ahren: Donald Trump brings God into the negotiation room
– Moshe Arens: No solution in sight
– Eitan Haber: Welcome to Israel, Mr. President
– Tovah Lazaroff: Why a photo-op of PM and Trump at the Western Wall matters
– Sallai Meridor: Say ‘yes’ to deal
– Oded Revivi: Israelis and Palestinians as co-workers (click via Twitter)

Featured image: screen grab of Reuters video; jets CC BY-NC US Air Force;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05212017-saudi-arms/
Israel Wary of $110 Billion US-Saudi Arms Deal
Israel Daily News Streamabout 1 hour ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. On his first day in Riyadh, President Donald Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The sale is being made with an eye towards the creation of an ‘Arab NATO,’ a military alliance of Sunni Arab states to counter-balance threats from Iran and Islamic State.

However, officials in Jerusalem telling Israeli media that they’re concerned for Israel’s qualitative military edge and that Israel wasn’t consulted. More on that at Ynet and the Times of Israel.

The deal includes tanks and helicopters for border security, ships for coastal security, intelligence-gathering aircraft, a missile-defense radar system and cybersecurity tools, according to the State Department.
For comparison, the memorandum of understanding governing the next decade of US military assistance to Israel — which was signed last year — is worth $38 billion.

helicopter
US Army soldiers attach a howitzer to a Chinook helicopter during a 2016 readiness test.

2. Saudi Arabia denied a visa to an Israeli journalist in the White House press corps. Orly Azoulay, Yediot Aharonot’s Washington bureau chief won’t be able to cover the Riyadh portion of Trump’s first trip abroad as President. Azoulay tweeted and told The Algemeiner that the Saudis didn’t just snub her but the White House as well:

“It is a snub for the president,” Azoulay said. “I was part of the formal travel press, and that means that the Saudis could select who is coming with the president of the United States. In the past I traveled to Saudi Arabia three times…They were ready to issue me a visa then. But now, maybe they want to send some signal to the White House and the president.” . . .
 
Azoulay was not the only Israeli member of the press denied a visa by Saudi Arabia, where Trump will arrive on Saturday. Gil Tamary of Israel’s Channel 10, and Dan Raviv, an American-born reporter in Washington for the Israel-based i24 News TV channel, were similarly barred.

3. The Jerusalem Post and Ynet have all the details of Trump’s itinerary for the 28-hour period the President’s in Israel and the West Bank.

See previews of different angles of Trump’s Israel visit at the Washington Post, Haaretz, Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter), the Los Angeles Times and the Religion News Service.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Ahead of Trump’s visit, the Israeli cabinet was due today to vote on Palestinian economic benefits. Details at the Times of Israel.

Among the measures to be presented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the opening of the Allenby Bridge crossing between the West Bank and Jordan 24 hours a day, progress in developing West Bank industrial zones near Jenin and Tarkumiya (west of Hebron), and increased building permits for Palestinians living in Area C of the West Bank.
• While US and Israeli leaders put a happy face on relations between the two countries, furious Israeli intelligence officials reportedly shouted at their US counterparts over Trump’s intelligence leak to Russian diplomats. Ynet picked up on a Foreign Policy report shedding more light on the Israeli ire. FP writes:

The details Trump spilled likely came from a source that was also useful on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Hezbollah proxies in Syria and Lebanon, which are much higher priorities for Israel, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
 
“To the Israelis, ISIS is not that big of a concern,” the defense official said, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State. “We have a partner that has done us a favor. They went out of their way to support us in a campaign against ISIS, that they have no real skin in.” . . .
 
If the source was lost, it also could affect a U.S.-led military operation to take back Raqqa from the Islamic State with American-backed Syrian Kurdish and Arab forces, he said.
top secret

• A White House map of Israel nixes the post-1967 borders, omitting Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The map appears in a video promoting Trump’s Mideast visit.

• Death sentence in Gaza for Palestinian charged with killing senior Hamas figure. Ashraf Abu Laila will be hanged for allegedly gunning down Hamas military commander Mazen Fuqaha on orders from Israel. Hamas will execute two other Palestinians allegedly involved in the murder.

• The Red Cross closed its Ramallah office over ‘threats’ from Palestinians unhappy with the organization’s ‘shortcomings’ responding to hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners.

• The Israel-PA Joint Water Committee met for the first time in years, reports Israel HaYom. (Related reading: Palestinians Use Water as Weapon Against Israel.)

• The army nabbed a Palestinian ambulance driver who allegedly blocked Israeli’s escape from a riot.

• Worth reading: The Washington Post takes a closer look at the PA terror stipends.

• Israeli security forces arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian girl carrying a knife at Qalandiya checkpoint, between Jerusalem and Ramallah on Saturday.

• A US court dismissed Israeli victims’ tactic of suing Facebook for Palestinian terrorism. More at AP and the Jerusalem Post:

The 20,000 plaintiffs’ case was combined with a $1 billion damages case on behalf of the families of five victims, including US Army veteran Taylor Force, killed in a terrorist attack in March 2016 in Jaffa, against the terrorist group Hamas . . .
 
Shurat Hadin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner responded stating that she was disappointed, but looked forward to a strong appeal. She said, “The district court simply ignored the claim that Facebook is liable for providing material support to designated terrorist groups when it allows Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS and the PLO to utilize its social media pages.”
 
“There is no difference between providing banking services to terrorists and providing a Facebook or Twitter account,” she added.
• Lebanon claims it arrested an Iraqi national it accuses of gathering information about the Lebanese army and various individuals, as well as trying to recruit others for a “sabotage network.” AP coverage.

• Wait, what? Hamas bans dog-walking in Gaza.

dog

• New IDF Spokesperson takes office: Brig. Gen. Ronen Manlis replaces Maj. Gen. Moti Almoz. Ynet coverage. And on a related note, the IDF’s social media maven Lt. Col. Peter Lerner says goodbye to the army after 25 years of service.

• Worth reading: Australia’s ABC News visited the Ziv Hospital in Safed, where more than 3,000 wounded Syrians have received medical treatment over the last four years.

The majority of Syrian children Dr Harari treats have lost limbs through shelling and barrel bombs.
 
“I lived in the third world for many years. I lived in Papua New Guinea for three years. I thought I’d seen it all and felt it all, but no,” he said quietly.
 
“There’s something obviously shocking about it. Appalling. I don’t really have a rich enough vocabulary to tell you what my true feelings are.”
Around the World
• Delegates at the Church of Scotland’s general assembly in Edinburgh are due to vote on economic sanctions against Israel. “Should the latest policy be approved when they convene on Monday, the church will lobby the UK government to begin a boycott of Israeli goods,” the Times of London reports.

Church of Scotland

• Members of the Modern Language Association are now voting on an anti-BDS resolution. Legal Insurrection updates the battle within the academic organization. Last January, MLA delegates at its annual convention rejected a pro-BDS resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel.

• French President Emmanuel Macron’s party withdrew a second candidate who supported BDS.

• There’s a sharp rise in Mexican anti-Semitic attitudes; a survey found 56% of population says Jews have ‘too much power’ in finance.

Commentary/Analysis
• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels weighing in on all things Trump-Israel . . .

Trump
President Donald Trump

– David Horovitz: Warmth and scale of Trump-Saudi embrace could spell trouble for Netanyahu
– Yaakov Katz: What has changed that Israel went from ecstasy over Trump to near-mourning?
– Zvi Bar’el: Saudi proposal to Israel could be the stuff of Trump’s Mideast dream deal
– Jonathan Tobin: The meaning of self-determination
– Bernard Avishai: Can Trump’s visit prompt new Mideast talks?
– Haviv Rettig Gur: Damning with deafening praise: Why Netanyahu is unimpressed by Trump
– Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky: Why Trump won’t find salvation in the Mideast
– Ben-Dror Yemini: An American president in the service of BDS
– Alex Fishman: Israel cannot ignore damage caused by Trump’s Russia leak
– Amb. Daniel Shapiro: Israelis cheered for Trump. But they may miss Obama more than they expected.
– Amb. Alan Baker: Four comments on the Trump visit
– Wall St. Journal (staff-ed): Trump wavers on Jerusalem (click via Twitter)
– National Post: Trump is right to pursue a pan-Arab NATO in the Mideast
• If you’re looking for a good whitewash of Hamas, its intentions and its charter, get a load of Sarah Helm in The Guardian. ‘Nuff said.

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

– Emily Landau and Shimon Stein: The Gulf’s last best offer to Israel
– Eugene Volokh: Facebook is not liable for not policing Palestinian terrorist accounts
– Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The sun shone, the trees blossomed, and the butchers slaughtered
– Jonathan Spyer: Syria has effectively ceased to exist
– Sohrab Ahmari: An Iranian voter’s guide: Don’t vote. (click via Twitter)
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Another win for the system in Iran
– Daily Telegraph (staff-ed) : Iran is still a rogue state

Featured image: CC BY-SA Gage Skidmore; helicopter CC BY The US Army; top secret CC0 Pixabay; dog CC BY-NC-ND Let Ideas Compete; Church of Scotland via Wikimedia Commons; Trump via The White House;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05182017-intelligence-inquiry/
US, Israel to Jointly Probe Trump Intel Leak
Israel Daily News Stream5 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel and the US want to clear up the intelligence leak affair before President Donald Trump arrives in Israel next week. That’s why the two countries are fast-tracking a joint inquiry into what exactly Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about Islamic State.

Meanwhile, Israeli media reported that the info came from IDF Military Intelligence, whose source was in Raqqa, Syria. And the Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) described Israel’s man in Raqqa as “the most valuable source of information on external plotting by Islamic State.”

President Donald Trump

2. A settler whose car was stoned by a mob of Palestinians shot and killed one of the rioters this afternoon near the West Bank town of Hawara, near Nablus. Media reports described the Palestinian ambush as an attempted lynching. More on the story at the Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and Ynet.

Two other Palestinians were injured, including a photojournalist identified as Majdi Ashtiyeh of the Associated Press.

3. Ahead of Trump’s visit, the PA is putting together a request for an economic stimulus package. The Times of Israel describes Ramallah’s wish list:

Among the requests presented by PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s entourage during a visit to Washington earlier this month were an airport in the West Bank, hotels on the the coast of the Dead Sea, a power station in the northern West Bank and a cement factory in Bethlehem.
4. The Independent Embeds Tweet Calling for Israel’s Destruction: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” is a call for Israel’s destruction as it refers to all of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli police targeting Hamas’ West Bank terror infrastructure confiscated cars, computers and thousands of shekels given to the families of Palestinian terrorists in the Hebron area. The IDF said Hamas used these gifts to boost its recruiting and encourage more attacks. More at the Jerusalem Post.

• As so-called ‘honor killers’ get away with murder, Palestinians say PA law and judges are outdated. The Times of Israel takes a closer look at the phenomena of Palestinian honor killing and efforts to change PA law to swing justice back towards women.

• Trump’s Mideast trip might include the first direct Saudi-Israeli flight.

• The European Union announced its new ambassador to Israel will be Emanuele Giaufret. The Italian diplomat will succeed Danish Lars Faaborg-Andersen, whose four-year term ends this summer.

Around the World
Northwestern U.• Northwestern U. president Morty Schapiro joined a vigil for victims outside convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh’s campus speech. Odeh is due to be deported from the US for lying to immigration officials about her involvement in two Jerusalem terror attacks in 1969 — one of which killed two Israeli university students.

“He attended the vigil to show his support for the students who were slain,” said Northwestern spokesman Bob Rowley in an email. “He held a candle in silence with the others, some 120 people, gathered outside. One of the signs at the vigil read, ‘May their memories be for a blessing.’”
• Administrators at University California-Irvine are reviewing a pro-Palestinian student group’s protest during Israeli veterans panel. The Los Angeles Times notes that “It was the second time in a year that Students for Justice in Palestine interrupted an event presented by Students Supporting Israel.”

• JTA: All 50 US governors signed a statement rejecting BDS.

• Denmark is set to announce $8 million in grants to radical pro-BDS Palestinian NGOs.

• Ban on ritual slaughter passes without opposition in Belgium’s largest region.

• Judge dismisses lawsuit aimed at stopping slaughter of chickens in Jewish ritual

• Tombstones toppled at Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia.

Commentary/Analysis
• Worth reading: Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman weighs in on Trump’s leak and what it means for the bigger picture of Israeli-US intelligence cooperation.

In this relationship, Israel has always had an advantage in the recruitment and handling of agents in Arab countries, and the Americans have the edge when it comes to the technology for intercepting transmissions. In practical terms, Israel has become the eyes and ears of the United States in the Middle East. This arrangement has freed the United States from a heavy intelligence-gathering burden. But it has also forced the Americans to depend upon the Israelis . . .
 
In recent months, Israel has passed on to the United States a great deal of highly sensitive and detailed information about the close coordination between the armed forces of Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, under Russian command. The problem, according to a former senior Mossad official, lies not in the information but in the most highly sensitive sources, some of whom were cultivated for years: “The Russians are not dumb. They’ll realize where it comes from and they or their allies, all Israel’s enemies, will take appropriate steps.”
See also Yossi Alpher‘s take on what Israel makes of Trump’s gaffe.

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

– Jonathan Tobin: On Israel, Trump has moved from outsider to wimp
– Ido Aharoni: Trump in Israel: What’s the plan?
– Tovah Lazaroff: Six reasons Trump’s visit appears jinxed
– Yoav Limor: Trump leak: Just a snag, nothing more
– Avi Issacharoff: Barghouti is forcing Israel to decide between bad and worse
– Deborah Lipstadt: The meaning of Assad’s alleged crematorium

Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND Mark Belokopytov; confidential CC0 Pixabay;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05162017-trump-intelligence/
Did Trump Disclose Israeli Intelligence to Russians?
Israel Daily News Stream44 mins ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. After the Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump revealed highly classified intelligence about Islamic State to Russian diplomats, speculation abounded whether the information shared perhaps came from Israeli or Jordanian intelligence services.

The White House denied the report, but here are two tea leaves to consider: Trump’s top agenda item for today was calling Jordan’s King Abdullah. And in January, Ronen Bergman reported that US intelligence officials warned their Israeli counterparts to “be careful” about sharing information with the White House because of Trump’s “Russia thing.”

Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom elaborated to the Jerusalem Post why Trump’s alleged slip would be a “grave violation” of the norms of intelligence sharing.

White House Russia
A Russian Foreign Ministry photo showing Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (left), President Donald Trump (center) and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak meeting in the White House on May 10.

2. Syrian crematory hides mass killings of prisoners, US says.

Mr. Assad’s forces and their allies have been widely accused by human rights groups and others of killing thousands of prisoners and burying their bodies in mass graves during the course of the war, now in its seventh year.
 
But the Trump administration went further on Monday, contending that the government was systematically incinerating the corpses of executed inmates at the Sednaya prison complex north of Damascus to destroy evidence that could be used to prosecute war crimes

3. Ahead of Trump’s visit, the Gulf states have offered to improve their relationship with Israel if Israel makes a “significant overture” to the Palestinians. The Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) picked up on an “unreleased discussion paper shared among several Gulf countries.”

The Arab carrots include “establishing direct telecommunications links with Israel, allowing overflight rights to Israeli aircraft, and lifting restrictions on some trade,” as well as “the issuance of visas for Israeli sports teams or trade delegations to take part in events in Arab countries,” and “Israeli integration into regional trade and business bodies.”

The Gulf countries, in turn, would require Mr. Netanyahu to make what they would consider to be a peace overture to the Palestinians. Such steps could include stopping construction of settlements in certain areas of the West Bank and allowing freer trade into the Gaza Strip . . .
 
The confidence-building steps being considered by Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and other Gulf states would be phased in if Israel were to take reciprocal steps to improve relations with the Palestinians.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The easiest way to follow the soap opera of Jerusalem and the Trump administration is to simply list the headlines from one paper in chronological order. Sheesh.

– Tillerson: Trump weighing whether embassy move will help or hurt peace
– Trump set to become first sitting US president to visit Western Wall
– Israel won’t commit suicide over US Embassy move, top lawmaker says
– Liberman: No need to pick a fight over moving US embassy
– New US ambassador arrives in Israel, prays for Trump at Western Wall
– Senior member of Trump team said to tell Israelis: Western Wall is not your territory
– Netanyahu denies privately urging Trump not to move embassy to Jerusalem
– Adelson reportedly ‘furious’ with Tillerson for tying embassy move to peace deal
– US officials said to be pressuring Trump not to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
– White House: Western Wall comments ‘unauthorized,’ do not represent Trump’s stance
– Amb. David Friedman meets Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler at Western Wall

Ambassador Friedman presented his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem today, as did new ambassadors from Spain and Thailand. Aerosmith performs in Tel Aviv tomorrow night.

Look who Ambassador to #Israel David Friedman ran into at the #WesternWall #Aerosmith .@IamStevenT pic.twitter.com/e4ZwQdqjq1
— USEmbassyTelAviv (@usembassyta) May 16, 2017
• There may be an end to the Palestinian hunger-strike impasse. Haaretz reports that both Israel and the PA want the issue resolved ahead of Trump’s visit and the International Committee of the Red Cross may provide a face-saving compromise allowing both sides to claim victory:

The striking prisoners were very upset when their family visits were cut from twice a month to just once a month. But that reduction had nothing to do with Israel; it was announced by the ICRC, which organizes the visits, about a year ago, for reasons of its own.
 
The defense establishment is therefore talking with the ICRC about reinstating the twice-monthly visits. That would be a significant improvement for the prisoners, and they might consider it enough of an achievement to justify ending the strike.
However, Ynet reports that the prisoners are threatening to escalate their hunger strike by refusing to drink water. And Israel HaYom reports that Israeli officials are laying the groundwork to transfer a group of hunger-striking prisoners to a geriatric care facility in Rishon Lezion, should it become necessary.

• Days before Trump visit, Palestinian mayor dedicates square to terrorist. The West Bank town of Tulkarem dedicated the square to Maher Younis, who is imprisoned for the 1980 murder of IDF soldier Avraham Bromberg. Details at the Jerusalem Post.

• Palestinian lawmaker Jamal Hawil of Fatah was photographed participating in a clash with soldiers near Beit El according to Israeli media reports.

Asked by Channel 2 to comment on the images, Hawil tried to downplay the significance of a PA official throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers.
 
“It doesn’t matter if I threw rocks or not, the entire Palestinian nation throws rocks,” he said.
??? ??????? ?? ??”? ????? ?’??? ?’??? ????? (??? ?? ????? ??????) ????? ???????? ?? ??”? ??? ????? ??? ??
????? pic.twitter.com/QFsfGRK4V7
— Gal Berger ?? ???? (@galberger) May 15, 2017
• Israel and Ukraine mended fences as Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman visited Israel. Ties between the two countries took a hit when Ukraine voted for UN Security Council resolution 2334 which denounced Israeli settlements. The Jerusalem Post reports that more recently, Ukraine tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to block a UNESCO resolution rejecting Israeli sovereignty over both eastern and western areas of Jerusalem.

Groysman, who is Jewish, wants to “finalize cooperation deals with regard to counterterrorism, health and statistical data exchanges” that were put on the backburner in the fallout over the Security Council vote.

• Israeli cabinet minister cancels Jordan visit after stabbing.

• Ynet: Israeli family rescued after accidentally entering Palestinian village.

• Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein to address Russian parliament 30 years after gulag release. Jerusalem Post coverage.

“This is a special trip and there is great excitement about it,” Edelstein said Monday. “We can’t ignore the symbolism of something that could have been considered a mirage not that many years ago, that someone who was a prisoner in the Soviet Union will stand on the stage of the parliament in Moscow and give a speech as the speaker of the Knesset of Israel.”
Yuli Edelstein
Knesset chairman Yuli Edelstein attends a conference on the topic of strengthening the relationship between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount, held at the Israeli parliament on November 07, 2016. Photo by Miriam Alster/FLASH90

Around the World
• Jewish Chronicle: UK Labour changes manifesto to condemn Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.

• I would never have the patience to attend Israel-bashing academic conferences. Which is why I’m glad someone like David Collier shines a light on the dishonesty and chicanery he found at a University of Sussex gathering discussing 50 years of Israeli occupation.

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

– Amos Harel: The triple blow of Trump’s intelligence leak to Russia
– Bassam Tawil: The Palestinian threats Trump needs to hear
– Aaron David Miller: Why Trump’s love affair with Netanyahu won’t last
– Jeff Jacoby: Great timing, Mr. Ambassador
– Colbert King: Trump wants to treat Middle East peace like a real estate deal. That’s arrogant thinking.
– Moshe Elad: The ‘impending humanitarian disaster’ syndrome
– Jonathan Schanzer: There’s no such thing as ‘the Arab street’ (click via Twitter)
– Saeed Rahnema: Iranians set to choose the lesser of two evils (click via Twitter)
– Benny Avni: Iran’s set to choose another angry prez

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Nathan Thrall.

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05152017-hebron-mayor/
Murderer of Jews Elected Hebron Mayor
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. A Palestinian convicted of killing six Israelis in a 1980 terror attack was elected mayor of Hebron. The Times of Israel explains what you need to know about Tayseer Abu Sneineh:

Tayseer Abu Sneineh was selected by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah to head the party’s list in Hebron for Saturday’s West Bank elections. Despite the party winning only seven of 15 seats in the West Bank’s largest city, according to official results, Abu Sneineh will have a mandate to head the council.
 
Abu Sneineh was one of four Palestinian terrorists who on May 2, 1980 attacked a group of Israelis and Jews in a Hebron alley, firing and hurling grenades at them. The attack killed US citizens Tzvi Glatt and Eli HaZe’ev, Canadian Shmuel Marmelstein and Israelis Hanan Krauthammer, Gershon Klein and Ya’akov Zimmerman. Another 20 people were injured in the attack.
 
The four terrorists were all sentenced to life in prison, but were released in prisoner exchanges later in the decade.
Hebron 6
The six Jews killed in a May, 1980 terror attack involving newly elected Hebron Mayor Tayseer Abu Shneineh: Clockwise from top center: Shmuel Mermelstein, Tzvi Glatt, Hanan Krauthammer, Eli HaZe’ev, Gershon Klein and Yaakov Zimmerman

2. The White House hasn’t published an official itinerary of President Donald Trump’s Israel visit, but the Times of Israel reports diplomatic buzz that he will become the first incumbent US president to visit the Western Wall.

If he indeed goes to the site, it would likely be interpreted by some as akin to an American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.

3. Palestinians, Shin Bet meet in failed attempt to end hunger strike.

4. Plane Hijacker, Terrorist… Female Icon? Leila Khaled still encourages the murder of Israelis and the destruction of the Jewish state.

5. Macleans: Failure to Disclose: Magazine editors fail to disclose that a lengthy book excerpt is a joint project of the radical Breaking the Silence organization.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Worth reading: Associated Press takes a closer look at the discrimination Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have been facing for 69 years. We’re talking about holding jobs, owning property, social benefits, leaving them vulnerable to all kinds of abuse.

Lebanese politicians say that assimilating Palestinians into society would undermine their right to return. But Palestinians say they are not asking for assimilation or nationality, just civil rights.
• Palestinian Authority hopes to launch e-currency in 5 years.

But it is unclear how the planned e-pound would skirt the 1994 Paris Protocol agreement which gave the PMA the functions of a central bank but without the ability to issue currency. The protocol recommended the use of the shekel and gave Israel an effective veto over a Palestinian currency.

• South Africa’s Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is fasting for 24 hours in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners according to South African media reports.

• Is it time to give another look at a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation? The Christian Science Monitor finds people on both sides of the river willing to entertain the notion.

Around the World
• Master of Cambridge college admits causing ‘hurt’ to Jewish students over misleading anti-Semitism inquiry.

• British media erroneously reports Israel quits Eurovision:

The confusion came about when newspapers The Sun and the Mirror Online accidentally misinterpreted an announcement made by Israeli commentator Ofer Nachshon on Saturday night during the contest, who said that the tournament would be the last time it is covered by the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) on the eve of its closure.
Mirror

• Fire destroys historic New York City synagogue. The cause hasn’t been determined yet.

• Teens identified as vandals of Jewish, Catholic headstones in main Rome cemetery

• For the second time in a year, University of California-Irvine students required a police escort from an IDF-related event due to intense protests.

• Mayor of Virginia city targeted by anti-Semitic tweets after criticizing marchers

• Tunisia to seek World Heritage status for Djerba island, site of Jewish pilgrimage.

• Newsweek picked up on a Pew Research Center study which found that nearly one-third of Eastern Europeans wouldn’t accept Jews, Muslims or Roma as citizens, while half wouldn’t want them moving into their neighborhood.
Commentary/Analysis
Ayatollah Ali Khameini

• On Friday, Iranians head to the polls to choose a new president. But don’t be fooled if you see images of long queues of voters — especially young ones — hear criticism of the Revolutionary Guards, or read commentaries spinning the rising reformists. Iran’s faking democracy.
However, the elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran are far from being free and democratic. The Guardian Council reviewed hundreds of applications and approved just a few candidates to run for president. The council is composed of six religious figures who are experts in Islamic law and six jurists specializing in various areas of civil law. All 12 are selected and appointed, either directly or indirectly, by the supreme leader himself.
 
No matter how many votes are cast for the would-be presidents, the winner will have essentially been selected by the ayatollah . . .
 
The majority of Iranian journalists, both within Iran and outside it, including those who work for the leading international newswires, sympathize and identify with the so-called reformist camp. That gives the reformists a leg up in terms of media attention and generally positive coverage internationally. Media reports often portray Rouhani as “oppressed” or “victimized” by hardliners intent on sabotaging his enlightened efforts.
 
Ironically, that narrative has granted him and his camp the credibility and political breathing room that has enabled them to avoid fulfilling their promises of social reform, especially when it comes to media freedoms.
Trump
President Donald Trump

• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels over Trump and the Mideast peace process
– Prof. Eugene Kontorovich: Russia recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Why can’t the US? (click via Twitter)
– David Horovitz: President Trump, you can start making peace. Here’s how
– Norman Bailey: Trump tilts at Palestinian windmill
– Kenneth Bandler: Peace process rituals
– Avi Issacharoff: How Donald Trump, darling of the Israeli right, reinvigorated Mahmoud Abbas

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

– Avi Mayer: Thoughts on Nakba Day
– Amos Harel: New underground reality takes shape along the Gaza-Israel border
– Rear Adm. (Ret.) Oded Gour Lavie: Israel as a regional, maritime superpower?
– Prof. Hillel Frisch: Hamas: Another failed Palestinian organization
– Yotam Goren: Value-based diplomacy: It exists and it’s effective
– Gefen Laredo: Why USCB should not divest from Israel
– Marc Goldberg: The unexpected death of BDS
– Efraim Karsh: The Six-Day War: An inevitable conflict
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: Will Trump waive sanctions against Iran?
– Damien Grant: Hysteria over Israel a stain on our nation
– Nadav Shragai: Jordan’s double game
 
Featured image:CC BY-NC Megan Trace; money CC0 Pixabay; Khameini via YouTube/The SayyidAli; Trump via YouTube/NBC News;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05112017-ap-nazis/
AP Denies Collaborating With Nazi Germany
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. Dogged by accusations that the wire service collaborated with Germany’s Nazi regime, the Associated Press released an in-depth review of its German operations during World War II disputing the charges. See the full report or AP’s condensed coverage of it.

The review was in response to an academic study last year by German historian Harriet Scharnberg which examined AP’s relationship with the Nazis.

“We recognize that AP should have done some things differently during this period, for example protesting when AP photos were exploited by the Nazis for propaganda within Germany and refusing to employ German photographers with active political affiliations and loyalties,” the report says.
 
“However, suggestions that AP at any point sought to help the Nazis or their heinous cause are simply wrong,” it adds.
I doubt this is the last we’ll hear on this matter.

Nazi book burning
A 1933 Nazi book-burning in Berlin

2. The IDF accused B’Tselem of ‘manufacturing’ conflicts over the latest video from the human rights non-governmental organization:

“There’s a difference between filming an event as it happens and manufacturing an event by arriving somewhere with a camera,” Almoz wrote.
 
“You largely choose the latter option and cause friction that didn’t exist beforehand,” he wrote. “You will continue to make movies ostensibly out of freedom of expression … and we will continue to defend the residents of the State of Israel and ensure the well-being of its citizens, without putting the [Israel Defense Forces] into political arguments.”

3. Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada set record in 2016, audit finds.

Possible reasons for the increase, the audit reported, included Holocaust denial on social media, university campus anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiment found in some Arabic newspapers.
 
The year 2016 saw a dramatic rise in incidents involving Holocaust denial, to 20 percent from 5 percent in 2015. In addition, a new trend in Canadian anti-Semitism was found to be incitement against Jews in the mass media, especially in Arabic-language publications.
4. The Lancet Cured of Anti-Israel Bias? The medical journal has a history of politicizing health to bashing Israel. Has the magazine been cured?
5. Six-Day War: 50th Anniversary Resource Primer: The 50th anniversary of Israel’s remarkable victory in the 1967 Six-Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem is fast approaching. HonestReporting has compiled a Resource Primer to mark the event. We are continuing to update new content

Israel and the Palestinians
• In a series of requests to US Ambassador Nikki Haley, Israel has asked for help repealing Security Council resolution 2334, which denounced settlements as illegal. Ynet describes more of the Israeli wish list:

Another central request put forth by the Israelis is to reduce the activities of UN bodies which dedicate significant, oftentimes disproportionate, resources and efforts toward the Palestinian issue. To this end, Israel has asked to slash the budget and manpower intended for such activities.
 
Moreover, the American are also asked to reduce the number of discussions held by the Security Council on Israel, which are currently held once a month.
Amb. Nikki Haley

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office postponed a meeting on construction projects in West Bank settlements until after President Donald Trump’s visit “avoid friction between Israel and the US.” Haaretz coverage.

• Will offshore natural gas deposits ever turn Israel into an energy powerhouse? Globes dampened my optimism. Factors include low oil prices making gas a less attractive investment, Israel’s geopolitical and security difficulties, Jerusalem’s bad reputation for regulation, and widespread assumptions that Egypt won’t be a purchaser.

• Hamas is still warm, fuzzy and moderate now, right? Glad to see Reuters and the Times of Israel get it.
TOI

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

– Elyakim Haetzni: No deal, Mr. President
– Jonathan Adelman: Why India and Israel are drawing closer
– Jerusalem Post (staff-ed): A counterproductive strike
Featured image: CC0 Pexels; book burning via Wikimedia Commons; Haley via Facebook/Nikki Haley;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05102017-fifa-israel/
FIFA Delays Debate on Kicking Israel Out of World Soccer
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. The leadership council of FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, delayed a discussion on Israeli settlement soccer clubs ahead of its upcoming annual congress, saying, “it is premature for the FIFA Congress to take any decision.” Times of Israel and Haaretz coverage.

A senior official from Israel’s Foreign Ministry noted that despite the FIFA council’s decision, the Palestinians could still request during the Congress – on Wednesday and Thursday – that the member states vote to reject the position of the FIFA council and in favor of their proposal against the settlement teams.
The controversy surrounds six low-level league teams: Ariel, Givat Ze’ev, Jordan Valley, Kiryat Arba, Ma’aleh Adumim and Oranit.

2. Turkey still allows Hamas activity on its territory. Ynet explains:

The main activities of the organization in Turkey is coordinating terror cells in the West Bank and according to the defense establishment, the relationship with Hamas leadership in Gaza is administered directly by the Turkish government in Ankara . . . .
 
The reconciliation agreement between Israel and Turkey was supposed to make it more difficult for Hamas to operate in Turkish territory, but Monday’s verbal assault by Erdogan has demonstrated otherwise

Trump
President Donald Trump

3. It’s official: Foreign Ministry workers call strike aimed at disrupting Trump visit over wage dispute. The Times of Israel explains:
In a memo to all ministry employees in Israel and abroad, head of the workers union head Hanan Goder said diplomats should desist from participating in any preparations for Trump’s visit. . .
 
It’s not clear what effect the strike will have on preparations for the visit, but Goder said workers would be prohibited from processing paperwork, attending planning meetings, placing orders with vendors or any other activities related to the high-level trip.
4. Você fala português? Você se importa com a cobertura de Israel na mídia brasileira? Então pare o que estiver fazendo agora e junte-se ao HonestReporting Brasil. Siga nossa página no Facebook.

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Do you speak French or Portuguese? Do you care about how the French or Brazilian media cover Israel? Then drop what you’re doing right now and join HonestReporting France and HonestReporting Brazil, follow on Facebook HR France and HR Brazil, and let your friends know.

5. HR Prompts Yet Another Tel Aviv Capital Correction at The Guardian: How many times can one paper keep getting it wrong?

Israel and the Palestinians
• Hamas released the names of several of its new politburo members, which Asharq al-Awsat says “highlights an increase in the presence of figures from its military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades.” Doesn’t sound like any new warm and fuzzy moderates are going to run the terror group along the lines of its new warm and fuzzy “charter.”

The list comprises four senior members of Al-Qassam Brigades, known as the “Hawks”, including al-Sanwar, who is a Hamas leader in Gaza; al-Arouri, who is accused by Israel of executing attacks; Hamad, a Hamas former interior minister who is known for his fundamentalism; and Obeid, a military leader in the West Bank who was at one point jailed by Israel.
 
Well-informed sources told Asharq al-Awsat that the new political bureau also includes Rouhi Moushtaha, another leader of Al-Qassam Brigades, who is on the US terror list . . .
 
In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, political writer Akram Attallah said that the election of military officials in the Movement’s political bureau was due to declining confidence in the political leaders.
Queen Elizabeth

• President Reuven Rivlin issued another invitation for the British royal family to visit Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post, the invite was conveyed to Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who is currently visiting the Holy Land.
Deferring to the presence of British Ambassador David Quarrey, Welby said that he was sure that the ambassador had conveyed an invitation, but he added that the queen, who recently celebrated her 91st birthday, has cut back on overseas travel. Undeterred, Rivlin replied: “It’s only a fivehour flight. It’s not like going to Australia.”
 
Noemi Toledano, the president’s spokeswoman, later clarified that any member of the royal family would be welcome.
Earlier this week, The Sun reported that the UK Foreign Office nixed a royal visit to Israel.

• Border Police foiled an attempted bombing at a military court near Jenin today.

• Unable to secure permission to fly over a number of Arab countries, Air India is scrapping planned Tel Aviv-New Delhi flights. More on the story at the Hindu BusinessLine and Globes.

Multiple officials confirmed to BusinessLine that the launch of the direct service has been delayed as the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, among others, have declined permission for the state-owned carrier to overfly their air space en route to Israel.
Air India

• The contentious Nationality Bill passed a preliminary Knesset reading, but still has more legislative hurdles to clear. Meanwhile, MK Avi Dichter — who drafted the legislation which would define Israel as a Jewish state and cement this status in the state’s Basic Laws — discussed the issue with the Times of Israel.

Around the World
• A Labour student leader who introduced Jeremy Corbyn at a party event quit over a series of anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic tweets, reports the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.

• Law enforcement officials in Las Vegas are investigating two fires at a Chabad building as a hate crime. A suspect has already been arrested.

• London police arrested a man brandishing knives and a meat cleaver threatening Jews.

Commentary/Analysis

Staunch Fatah figure Nasser Abu Bakr, who heads the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and also reports for AFP.

• The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) is up in arms over the release of video footage showing hunger strike leader Marwan Barghouti snacking on the sly. Bassam Tawil unpacks why it matters:

Strikingly, the worst threats against Israeli media came from none other than the body representing hundreds of Palestinian journalists — the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. Equally disturbing, the PJS is headed by Nasser Abu Bakr, a highly partisan political activist — and veteran journalist with the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).
 
A statement issued by Abu Bakr’s PJS, shortly after the Barghouti video was broadcast on Israeli television and radio stations, accused Israeli journalists of “collusion with the Israeli occupation authorities.”
 
The statement warned Palestinian, Arab and Western media outlets against dealing with Israeli journalists, whom it accused of “broadcasting poison” by exposing that Barghouti was eating while claiming to be on hunger strike . . .
 
Instead of reporting objectively about the controversy surrounding Barghouti’s “hunger strike” and the fact that the jailed Fatah leader was caught cheating, Abu Bakr and his PJS chose to wage a vicious campaign of incitement against Israeli media organizations and journalists for simply reporting the truth.
 
One can understand why Abu Bakr is so furious about the scandal surrounding Barghouti’s “hunger strike”: he belongs to the same Fatah faction whose members are purportedly fasting in Israeli prisons.
Related reading: When Palestinian Journalists Protest Normalization.

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

– Gil Troy: How Trump should tour Jerusalem
– Nahum Barnea: Give Trump a chance
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Erdogan’s uncontrollable urges
– Lyn Julius: Whom do you think you are kidding, Hamas?
– Clifford May: Hamas: Playing the world for a fool
– Avi Issacharoff: Video of Barghouti eating hasn’t taken a bite out of his popularity
– Michael Rubin: The end of Turkey’s Jews?
– Max Singer: The world didn’t agree to a nuclear-armed Iran, even in 10 years (click via Twitter)
– Dennis Ross: Qatar needs to stop funding Islamists
– Andrew Silow-Carroll: Jewish life, like college campuses, could use a little more free speech

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Richard Falk.
Featured image: CC0 Pexels; soccer CC0 Pixabay; Trump via The White House; Queen Elizabeth CC BY-NC-ND mrschnips; Nasser Abu Baker via Facebook/Maher Namoura; writer CC BY-NC Appalachian dreamer;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05072017-haniyeh-leader/
Ismail Haniyeh to Become Top Hamas Leader
Israel Daily News Stream6 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. Hamas announced that, as widely expected, Ismail Haniyeh was elected chairman of the terror group’s Politburo. It’s not clear when Haniyeh will formally take over the position, replacing Khaled Mashaal. Jerusalem Post coverage. For more on Haniyeh’s bio, see Ynet/AP. Also moving up the totem pole is Yihye Sinwar, who replaces Haniyeh as Gaza’s prime minister and strongman.

Tweet of the day goes to Aviva Klompas:

2. A Dallas-based bank is shutting down an Israel-bashing organization’s account just three days after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed anti-BDS legislation into law.

The slated termination of the account for the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which supports the BDS movement, is believed to be the first anti-Israel bank account closed by a US-based bank . . .

It is unclear if Comerica closed the account because financial business with the association was running afoul of the anti-BDS law or due to a possible violation of anti-terrorism laws. The association, whose headquarters are in Brussels, has a working relationship with a communist North Korean legal group and defends the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program.

Prince Charles

3. A proposed official royal visit to Israel was quashed by Britain’s Foreign Office, according to The Sun.
Prince Charles was set to travel to Israel to honour thousands of British war dead at the centenary of the WW1 Palestine Campaign and the historic Balfour Declaration.

But insiders say the controversial trip – unofficially pencilled in for later this year – has now been binned.

It is feared the decision may have been taken to avoid upsetting Arab nations in the region who regularly host UK Royals.
4. Hamas’s New Charter: Neither New, Nor a Charter: Hamas’ new manifesto does not change the fact that it is still a terror group committed to Israel’s destruction.

Israel and the Palestinians
• How does the Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) write such a self-contradictory paragraph?

Hamas dropped a longstanding call for Israel’s destruction and accepted the notion of a Palestinian state based on Israeli borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The group, however, said it would continue not to recognize Israel’s right to exist and would eventually seek to control all of historic Palestine, making up Israeli territory, the West Bank and Gaza.
I’m asking the same question about AP:

It has also dropped explicit language calling for Israel’s destruction, though it retains the goal of eventually “liberating” all of historic Palestine, which includes what is now Israel.
• Worth reading: The Times of Israel takes a closer look the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, what’s behind it, and why Israel could even benefit by giving consideration to at least some of the demands.

• Bereaved Israeli families demand FIFA action over Palestinian soccer chief Jibril Rajoub’s terror incitement.

• French citizens living in West Bank get official letters addressed to Palestinian territories.

• “A delegation of more than 50 members of Congress is calling on the Trump administration to reverse a longstanding policy that prohibits Americans born in Jerusalem from listing Israel as their birthplace on official documents, according to a letter sent to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.”

In 2015, the US Supreme Court struck down part of a federal statute that would have allowed Americans born in Jerusalem to list “Jerusalem, Israel” as their place of birth, bringing an end to the case of Zivotofsky vs. Kerry.

• Wall St. Journal: For Arab Gulf states, Israel is emerging as an ally. (Click via Twitter).

• A contentious ‘Nationality Law’ defining Israel as a Jewish state cleared a legislative hurdle and will go to the Knesset for further debate. Ynet coverage.

The Nationality Law would enshrine as a Basic Law the concept that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. The legislation determines that all Israeli law must be interpreted according to this principle.

The legislation, which is considered its opponents as discriminatory towards Arab Israelis, specifies some of the practical aspects of the State of Israel being the nation-state of the Jewish people. The bill addresses state symbols (national anthem, flag, icons), Jerusalem as the capital, Hebrew as the official language, the right of return for Jews, the ingathering of the exiles, Jewish settlement, relations with the Jewish Diaspora, the Hebrew calendar, and holy sites.
• Israel to evict UN from its Jerusalem HQ? Uh, probably not.

• BDS feels the Bern: Sen. Bernie Sanders defended Israel on Al Jazeera, speaking out against BDS and the UN’s bias against the Jewish state. Watch the video, which is an excerpt from a longer, wider-ranging interview. Backstory at the JTA.

• Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby made a surprise visit to Gaza on Thursday. The Anglican Church leader “joined a lunch reception to hear from the Christian community about the particular challenges they face in Gaza,” and laid a wreath at the World War I Commonwealth Gaza War Cemetery.

• Eastern Jerusalem hospital turns away new patients after Palestinian Authority fails to pay millions in debt.

Around the World
• Barcelona‘s Jewish community is up in arms after the city council and mayor A) passed a symbolic resolution condemning the “Israeli occupation and the settlement policy in occupied Palestinian territory,” and then B) a speaking appearing by convicted Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled at a cultural festival sponsored in part by the municipality.

“To me, the municipality’s policy of welcoming refugees is great, but not terrorists who hijacked planes.”
• Wife of Honduran presidential candidate apologizes for praising Hitler.

Commentary/Analysis
• As winds of war rise, Israel must decide whether to pull the plug on Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority has asked Israel to stop deducting the price of the 125 megawatts that flow through the Israeli power lines to Gaza — NIS 40 million ($11 million) per month — from the tax refunds Israel transfers to the PA. What this means is that Israel will have to decide in the next few days whether to completely stop the flow of electricity to Gaza, thus increasing the danger of a humanitarian crisis, and with it the potential for violent conflict . . .

Alternatively, Israel could “buy” some quiet by itself paying the Israel Electric Corporation the monthly NIS 40 million for the electricity that Gazans receive from Israel in order to avoid a complete blackout in Gaza. In such a situation, Israel would be supplying and paying for electricity for the offices of high-ranking leaders, including Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, of a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction. Even the electricity in Hamas’s headquarters comes from Israel these days.

Israel’s decision-makers face a truly unenviable dilemma.
• Plenty more broken quills and burnt pixels commenting on the new Hamas leadership:

– Avi Issacharoff: New leader, same old Hamas, with Gazans now firmly in control
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Hamas’ game of musical chairs
– Amos Harel: Haniyeh’s election as new Hamas chief brings Gaza back to center stage
– Nic Robertson: Hamas is staring down the barrel of a huge long-term problem

• Zoe Kellner, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a board member of Badgers for Israel, describes the shenanigans behind the student government’s debate over BDS resolutions.

• An Israeli commando comments on finding a rifle inside a Palestinian child’s bed.

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

– Brig.-Gen (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser: The Trump effect on the Palestinian arena
– Rafael Medoff: Double standard on Holocaust denial
– Amos Harel: A photo-op with Trump is nice, but what the Palestinians really need is money
– Seth Frantzman: 5 reasons not to buy the “Israel Gulf states allies” narrative
– Yaakov Katz: A war or an operation?
– Prof. Michael Saenger: Bernie Sanders and the boundaries of the conversation
– Ben-Dror Yemini: UNESCO adds more fuel to the fire of hatred
– Zvi Bar’el: In squeezing Hezbollah’s coffers, US also hurts Lebanon
– David Makovsky: When international guarantees utterly failed
– Los Angeles Times (staff-ed): Trump’s latest arrogant overpromise: peace between Israelis and Palestinians
– Zalman Shoval: The Iran deal: An alarming picture

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Neil Quilliam and Gwynne Dyer.

Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND gato-gato-gato; Prince Charles via YouTube/The British Monarchy; prison CC0 Pixabay; unplugged CC0 Pixabay;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05042017-terror-payments/
PA Rejects Trump Request to Halt Terror Stipends
Israel Daily News Stream9 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. The Palestinian Authority rejected President Donald Trump’s request to halt PA payments to terrorists and their families, the Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel reported:

PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ foreign affairs adviser Nabil Shaath on Thursday told Israel Radio the Trump administration’s demand was intentionally designed to sink any potential for renewed US-led Israeli-Palestinian peace talks . . .

“It’s absurd to request that we stop paying the families of prisoners,” he said. “That would be like asking Israel to stop paying its soldiers.”
See below for more coverage and commentary of Trump’s meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

2. Israeli Foreign Ministry workers are threatening to disrupt the upcoming Trump visit over a long-standing wage dispute, the Times of Israel reports:

The fight between the diplomatic service and the Finance Ministry over low pay has been ongoing for several years. The diplomats argue that past agreements are not being honored and budgets are not being approved . . .

Head of the workers’ union Hanan Goder, who is also Israel’s ambassador to South Sudan, told Army Radio in a Thursday interview “we will take all measures,” vowing that the US president’s visit will be seen as “embarrassing,” while declining to reveal what actions they will take.

3. Apologists for Hezbollah and Hamas need to get on the same page over the “new” Hamas charter.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Regarding the Trump-Abbas talks, the Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) focused on the White House raising expectations of peace while articles in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times all look at Trump’s optimism for a deal.

• Israeli forces thwart Palestinian stabbing attack near Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs.

• During a West Bank raid, IDF forces discovered an M-16 assault rifle hidden in a child’s bed.

Steinmeier
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier

• German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is due to arrive in Israel on Sunday, still hasn’t ruled out meeting with left-wing NGOs Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem. Ynet writes:
Despite their concerns and Steinmeier’s noncommittal stance on the matter, state officials believe that he will show the appropriate sensitivity and refrain from meeting the groups, knowing that it could serve as a prelude to yet another diplomatic conflict with Israel—something that Steinmeier, an experienced diplomat, will probably aim to avoid.
• The Guardian and Christian Today picked up on Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s visit to the Holy Land.

Accompanied by British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis for much of the time, the leader of the Anglican church visited Yad Vashem, the Western Wall, Dome of the Rock, as well as friends of Hannah Bladon, a British student killed in a Palestinian terror attack last month.

Lamenting the Holocaust at @YadVashem with @ChiefRabbi today. We commit afresh to building bridges of friendship, tolerance and peace. pic.twitter.com/Vp3nR2ITC1
— Justin Welby ? (@JustinWelby) May 3, 2017
Around the World
• Man wanted for breaking into Jewish school bus in Brooklyn and lighting religious books on fire.

• Swastikas and other hate messages carved into Denver area cars.

• Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed an anti-BDS measure into law on Tuesday.

Commentary/Analysis
• Plenty of broken quills and burnt pixels over the Trump-Abbas meeting.

– David Horovitz: Trump’s welcome for Abbas is so warm he might have been hosting an Israeli leader
– Barak Ravid: Trump-Abbas summit: The more things change the more they stay the same
– Orly Azoulay: Trump’s new toy: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
– Chemi Shalev: Abbas unleashes adulation and flattery to win Trump over
– Raphael Ahren: Hope springs eternal as peace prospects run dry
– Oded Revivi: Opening White House doors to Abbas a losing proposition for Mideast peace
– Robert Danin: Can Abbas ever say yes to peace with Israel?
– John Hannah: Don’t waste Arab-Israeli cooperation on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process
– Los Angeles Times (staff-ed): What Abbas and Trump can do for each other

• For a sense of what the critics had to say, see Hanan Ashrawi.


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

– Avi Issacharoff: New Hamas policy document a PR exercise aimed at undermining PLO
– Ben Lynfield: Why is Egypt ‘indifferent’ to the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike?
– Amb. Alan Baker: UNESCO’s latest resolution on Jerusalem: Much of the same
– Ariel Bolstein: Jerusalem doesn’t need UNESCO
– Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein: Despite UNESCO’s bias, Jews won’t abandon Israel’s holy Jewish sites
– Morton Klein and Daniel Mandel: Do Palestinians want a peaceful state alongside Israel?
– Ehud Yaari: Why Iran’s building two land corridors to the Mediterranean

Featured image: CC BY-NC takis katris; Steinmeier CC BY-NC-ND Utenriksdepartemen

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05032017-hamas-charter/
Hamas Charter: New Language, Same Terror
Israel Daily News Stream6 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. In an effort to soften its image, Hamas released a new charter which nevertheless calls for “the complete liberation of Palestine,” advocates violence, and refuses to recognize Israel. In other words, nothing’s changed. The Jerusalem Post reports:

The document labels as “a national consensus” the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state along pre- 1967 lines with the return of refugees to their homes in Israel. However, it also “rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” . . .

While the new document appears to bring Hamas somewhat closer to the international consensus of a two-state solution, it clearly reaffirms Hamas’s approval of armed conflict with Israel.

“Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws,” the document states. “At the heart of these lies armed resistance, which is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.”
The Israeli government dismissed the document as a ploy. Here’s the charter’s full text.

More at Ynet and the Times of Israel, with plenty of commentary below.

See also HonestReporting’s response to the news coverage: Media Goes Kumbaya For Hamas. And sign our petition demanding the media stop whitewashing Hamas.

Why are some media portraying Hamas' new manifesto as motivated by a desire for PEACE? Hamas is still a terror group https://t.co/sTx3Szh1AW
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 3, 2017
2. UNESCO rejected Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem. On Israeli Independence Day, no less.

The Arabs enjoy an automatic majority, but Israel claimed a moral victory in the numbers. The vote passed 22-10 with 23 abstentions and three countries absent, meaning more countries abstained than voted with the Arabs. You can see the full text of the resolution.
3. As this roundup was published, Presidents Donald Trump and Mahmoud Abbas were due to meet at the White House. According to Haaretz, Trump will ask Abbas to stop paying stipends to the families of terrorists. The Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, NPR, Foreign Policy and Ron Kampeas also previewed today’s jaw-jaw.

Abbas and Trump
Mahmoud Abbas and Donald Trump

Israel and the Palestinians
• The warm fuzzy feelings for Hamas didn’t reach the offices of Human Rights Watch. After years of radio silence on the fate of two Israelis held captive by Hamas, HRW finally denounced the Islamists for holding Avera Mangistu and Hisham al-Sayed, both Israeli nationals with mental health issues who wandered over the Gaza border in 2014 and 2015. More at Ynet.

• Regarding Hamas efforts to plug its new charter, AP’s Fares Akram noted this:

Hamas delays for 2hours presser after Intercontinental hotel in Qatar apologizes to host event for fears of US Treasury Department sanctions
— Fares Akram (@faresakram) May 1, 2017

• Israel reprimanded Sweden’s ambassador for being the only European country to vote for the resolution.

• After UNESCO vote, Israel cuts another $1 million from UN budget

• According to a new UN report, Palestinian in-fighting is exacerbates the Gaza crisis.

I didn’t need a full 26 page report to tell you that, but UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov says the Strip “is facing a downward spiral of de-development, while the people in Gaza are caught in a cycle of humanitarian need and perpetual aid dependency.”

• Memri flagged Jordan’s Prime TV’s look at the Protocols of the Elders of Ziyon. The Protocols are one the ugliest, most enduring anti-Semitic screeds ever written, yet the Jordanians treated it as authentic.

• Israel refuses to extend visa of critical Dutch journalist. The NRC Handelsblad daily accused the Government Press Office of trying to silence Derk Walters, while the GPO cited an administrative technicality and said Walters refused to comply with requests for clarifications. See Haaretz and JTA coverage.

Around the World
Hassan Nasrallah
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah

• Bogged down fighting in Syria, Hezbollah is nearly bankrupt, though Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and other top leaders are managing to pad their wealth. The Times of Israel picked up on a German media report.

Despite $1 billion in aid that Israeli security officials estimate Hezbollah receives each year from its patron Iran, which is said to cover some 70 percent of the group’s annual finances, the increasing financial toll from its military involvement in Syria and lack of additional assistance from Tehran has forced the group to resort to extorting not only its “donors” in the country, but also Lebanese expatriates in Africa, South America, Europe and the United States, according to the report.

The blackmail has reportedly led to discontent within the Shiite group’s ranks and among its supporters, as Lebanese Shiites in the country have been forced into selling their assets and property in order to prop up Hezbollah and fund its operations . . .

Die Welt also reported that members of the terror group’s leadership have used Hezbollah funds for their own enrichment despite its dire fiscal situation, including the son of the organization’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, who is said to have taken money to fund a chain of coffee houses in Beirut.

In addition, Nasrallah himself is said to be worth some $250 million, according to Die Welt.
• Does the end of the Turkish democracy also means the end for the country’s Jewish community?

Malia Bouattia
Malia Bouattia’s farewell speech to the NUS

• Confirming everything we already knew about Malia Bouattia, the controversial UK student leader ended her term as president of Britain’s National Union of Students with a tearful shout of ‘free, free Palestine.’ Watch the video (skip to 10:19); backstory at The Algemeiner.

‘Nuff said.

• Wisconsin U. student government blames Israel — for police violence against African-Americans!?

• Foreign Affairs Minister Gerry Brownlee is trying to mend Israeli-Zealand ties.

• USA Today: On Yom HaZikaron, a Rutgers fraternity honored the legacy of Ezra Schwartz, who was shot and killed in a 2015 Palestinian terror attack.

Commentary/Analysis
• Plenty of broken reeds and burnt pixels over UNESCO, the Hamas charter and the Abbas-Trump meeting.

– Amb. Daniel Shapiro: Abbas in Washington: dancing in place or moving forward?
– David Makovsky: Low expectations for Abbas visit
– Aaron David Miller: What Trump’s meeting with Abbas means for the Middle East
– Grant Rumley: Can Trump make Mideast peace without Gaza?
– Nadav Shragai: UNESCO and fighting for the truth
– Herb Keinon: Losing at UNESCO isn’t everything
– Senators Chris Coons and Marco Rubio: Every Senator agrees the UN must change (click via Twitter)
– Jonathan Cristol: Don’t be fooled by Hamas’ rebranding — they’re still committed to anti-Semitism
– Andrew Bolt: Terrorist Hamas claims it’s now more moderate
– Adam Ragson: The new Hamas charter — no moderation here
– Kobi Michael: The new ‘softer’ Hamas position is nothing more than a front for plans of domination
– Maher Mughrabi: The new Hamas charter explained
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Yossi Dahan: How Israel’s government caved to settlement boycott
– Ben-Dror Yemini: With ‘Zionists’ like that, who needs enemies?
– Doron Hindin: The UN’s campaign against business in Israel makes no sense
– Sima Kadmon: What was Netanyahu’s real reason for snubbing German FM?
– Mitchell Bard: The ‘occupation tour’
– Gary Rosenblatt: Confessions of a once-distant Zionist
– Johanna Meckel: My name is Marla Bennett
– Charles Bronfman and Susie Gelman: A first step to peace: Calm angers, then talk

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Tareq Baconi, Daoud Kuttab, Mairav Zonszein and Jibril Rajoub.
Featured image: CC0 unsplash; Abbas CC BY-NC-ND European External Action Service; Trump CC BY-SA Gage Skidmore; Nasrallah via YouTube/Sayed Hasan; Bouattia via YouTube/National Union of Students UK; quill CC0 Pixabay/Ashreila;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-05012017-unesco-battle/
Israel Battles Against Tomorrow’s UNESCO Vote
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago

Flags lay on graves of fallen Israeli soldiers on Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem on April 28, 2017. Israel begins a 24-hour period of honoring it's fallen soldiers and those who died in attacks when Memorial Day begins on April 30 at sundown. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel is battling the Palestinians over tomorrow’s UNESCO vote on a resolution expected to deny Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. Adding to the symbolism, the vote takes place during Israel’s Independence Day, and ahead of Mahmoud Abbas’ upcoming visit to the White House. Jerusalem Post coverage.

The Palestinians have an automatic majority on the board, but the PA and Israel are battling for the support of the 11 EU member states. Their votes have come to represent a “moral” political victory.
Related tweet of the day goes to Seth Frantzman.

@KhaledAbuToameh @AvivaKlompas The PA didn’t properly develop Battir despite it winning UNESCO status. It was a “world heritage” site barely anyone goes to today
— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) April 30, 2017
2. Jerusalem Post: It’s unconfirmed if German President Frank-Walter Steinmeir will meet with representatives of Breaking the Silence in his upcoming visit to Israel. Steinmeier arrives in Israel next week for a three-day visit.

Israeli-German ties took a hit when German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel met with members of BtS over Netanyahu’s objections. Breaking the Silence a left-wing non-governmental organization collects testimonies anonymously from Israeli soldiers about what it calls “the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories.”

A representative at the German Embassy said that Steinmeier’s schedule is still being put together, and there was no formal decision yet on with whom, or with what organizations, he will meet.
See responses by Ben-Dror Yemini and Spengler.

3. Abbas will continue to pay Palestinian prisoners, PA minister says.

4. Newsweek’s Capital Offense: Tel Aviv is not Israel’s capital.

5. Likud Becomes “Far Right” According to The Independent: For some journalists, applying labels like “hawks,” “hardliners,” “ultra-nationalists,” and “firebrands” is a favorite pastime.

6. HonestReporting’s Daniel Pomerantz joined MK Merav Ben-Ari, Al-Monitor’s Akiva Eldar and host Ami Kaufman on i24 News’ The Spin Room for a spirited discussion on rocky Israeli-German ties, President Donald Trump’s expected visit to Israel, the Hamas-Fatah split, and more.


THE SPIN ROOM | Member of Israeli parliament… by i24news-en

Israel and the Palestinians
• Who are the possible successors to Mahmoud Abbas? The Wall St. Journal looks at four emerging leaders.

• Worth reading: Bereaved families of fallen soldiers share their stories.

• Egyptian energy companies were ordered to pay $2 billion in compensation to the Israel Electric Corporation. “Repeated attacks by terrorists on Sinai pipeline to Israel caused collapse of gas deal, forced Israel to use more expensive and polluting fuel.”

• Israeli media picked up on an Al Jazeera documentary about the Hamas drone-maker assassinated in Tunisia, Mohammad al-Zawahri.

• Pathetic Reuters “coverage” of what Hamas is billing as a new and improved not anti-Semitic charter. Fortunately, Haaretz has more realistic coverage. Last word goes to Julie Lenarz.

#Hamas also denies new document will replace its genocidal charter. Terrorists then & now. https://t.co/99r9mIicu9 pic.twitter.com/py1RnCMkFf
— Julie Lenarz (@MsJulieLenarz) May 1, 2017
Around the World
• The Irish Army wrapped up a $2 million deal to buy aerial drones from an Israel company. Critics say the purchase “may damage Ireland’s ‘honest broker’ role in Middle East peacekeeping duties,” the Ireland’s Sunday Independent.

• David Collier was on hand as Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev spoke to London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

But the story of the visit by Mark Regev to SOAS, is far bigger than a few bigoted student activists.
• Was 2014’s Operation Protective Edge a “war” in Gaza, or a fight against “terror”? That’s the $7 million question being posed in a California court. The USA Network, which was filming the miniseries, “Dig” in Israel, was saddled with unexpected expenses when it was forced to relocate much of its production to New Mexico.

When the network tried to claim $7 million in insurance, the Atlantic Insurance Company balked, insisting the conflict was a war, while the TV network called the conflict terror. A hearing is set for May 22. More at the Jerusalem Post.
Behind the scenes during filming of the miniseries “Dig.”

• The Front door of a Milwaukee Jewish elementary school was hit with bullet on Friday morning. The glass door was broken but the bullet didn’t enter building. Nobody was injured. Police it was a stray bullet and that the Yeshiva Elementary School was not deliberately targeted. More on the story at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and JTA.

Commentary/Analysis
Marwan Barghouti in 2006

• Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs, got op-ed space in the New York Times to unpack the truth behind the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger-strike.
Unstated, but understood, is that the paper’s mending fences with Israel after the Times sanitized the terror background of hunger strike leader Marwan Barghouti.

Mr. Barghouti seems to hope that being chosen to succeed Mr. Abbas will lead to his release from prison. But he faces competition from several rivals and recently failed to secure a senior position in a round of political appointments of Fatah leadership. The hunger strike is another step in his campaign to position himself as Mr. Abbas’s successor. The political nature of the strike is a main reason the leaders of Fatah’s rival, Hamas, have not backed the strike.
• A Yom HaZikaron op-ed by Col. Richard Kemp, Maj.-Gen. Jim Molan and Arsen Ostrovsky wonders where is the world’s outrage over Hamas holding the bodies of Israeli soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul?

Holding the bodies of soldiers killed in action and refusing their return to their next of kin for burial is a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law. As is using the soldiers’ bodies as bargaining chips, which Hamas continues to do.

Only last week, the terrorist group released a morbid video including a song in Hebrew, taunting the families of Goldin and Shaul, again in breach of international law.

To this day, almost three years since their abduction, Hamas refuses even to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access.
Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul
Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul

• Yom HaZikaron’s on my mind . . .

– Haviv Rettig Gur: In our forgetfulness, we turned our children into heroes
– Hassan Shaalan: ‘The pain persists’
– Col. Itzik Cohen: The promise to forge ahead
– Eitan Haber: The moment life was shattered
– Annika Hernroth-Rothstein: Cause and effect
– Jerusalem Post (staff-ed): The cost of freedom on Israel’s 69th birthday
– Jack Schwartz: Israel was not born of the Holocaust

• As Israelis remembered their fallen soldiers and terror victims, Ofir Gendelman draws attention to the IDF’s Muslim soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice.

130 Muslim IDF soldiers have fallen defending Israel. They fought alongside their Jewish brothers in arms. We remember their sacrifice. pic.twitter.com/C2ASR50Y40
— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) May 1, 2017
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Amb. Ron Prosor: UNESCO trying to impose a fake history
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Embattled, weak Abbas comes to the White House
– Josh Rogin: If Trump has a strategy on Israeli-Palestinian peace, it’s remaining a secret
– Elliott Abrams: Teaching Palestinian children to value terrorism
– Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: Does anyone here care about Muslim women?
– The Australian (staff-ed): Abbas visit rekindles hopes
– Robert Fulford: In a restless Germany, a new generation tires of the shame for Nazi crimes

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04302017-uneseco-germany/
Israel Blames Germany for Hostile UNESCO Resolution
Israel Daily News Stream7 hours ago

Israeli soldiers stand at attention and bow their heads as siren heard during a Memorial Day ceremony at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, in Jerusalem's Old City, April 14, 2013. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90
32
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel blames Germany for EU support of UNESCO’s latest anti-Israel resolution, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Israel believes that Berlin led the charge for an amended resolution — submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan — which European Union states are likely to vote “yes” on, or abstain.

Now that the 11 EU member states on the 58-member UNESCO Executive Board have given their tacit approval for the document, diplomatic sources said, it would be difficult for Israel to sway other nations to oppose it.
More on the story at Haaretz.

2. As Yom HaZikaron approaches, Israel prepares to mourn its fallen soldiers and victims of terror. See below for more on the story.

3. Israel and North Korea in war of words after Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman called Kim Jong Un’s regime a “crazy and radical group.” Haaretz explains why there’s no love lost between Jerusalem and Pyongyang:

North Korea is considered one of the world’s most hostile nations toward Israel. In the last decades, it has provided training, arms and various technologies to entities considered enemies of the Jewish state, including Iran, whose missile program benefitted greatly from North Korean assistance.

According to foreign reports, North Korea was also involved in helping Syria build a nuclear reactor, which was destroyed in an attack attributed to Israel in 2007.
4. Six-Day War: 50th Anniversary Resource Primer: The 50th anniversary of Israel’s remarkable victory in the 1967 Six-Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem is fast approaching. HonestReporting has compiled a Resource Primer to mark the event.

Dedicated to the memory of legendary Israeli photojournalist David Rubinger, we’ve gathered background information from a wide variety of sources to give a deeper understanding of how circumstances developed over the weeks and months leading up to the war. Sections will be continuously updated as more relevant content, educational materials, analysis and news items become available. Click here to enter.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Could an Israeli-Turkish pipeline begin transferring natural gas to Europe in the next two-three years? Hurriyet News and columnist Selin Nasi take a closer look.
• The Wall St. Journal visited Eliad, an area of the Golan Heights adjacent to Islamic State-controlled Syrian territory and the Jordanian border. Click via Twitter.

“My grapes are just 10 meters from the border fence. Sometimes I hear the booms on the other side. Sometimes I see people on the other side. They look like shepherds, but who knows,” said the Israeli winemaker. “It’s crazy.”

So far, Islamic State hasn’t bothered his vineyard. “I am here all alone on my tractor at night and I am not afraid.”


• On Sunday night and Monday day, Israelis pay tribute to fallen soldiers and terror victims on Yom HaZikaron. Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the Memorial Day based on Haaretz and government figures.

– 23,544: Total number of fallen since 1860, when Jews began moving outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
– 60: soldiers and security personnel who died since last Yom HaZikaron.
– 37: wounded veterans who succumbed to injuries since last Yom HaZikaron
– 11: civilians killed since last Yom HaZikaron
– 9,157: bereaved parents
– 4,881: widows
– 1,843: orphans under age of 30.
– 2,895: Israeli civilians killed in Israeli in hostile acts since 1948
– 122: foreign national civilians killed in hostile acts in Israel since 1948.
– 100: Israeli civilians killed in terror attacks abroad

Israel also remembers the Druze, Bedouin and Christian soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice for the state.

• On Monday night, the solemnity of Yom HaZikaron gives way to Independence Day. Ahead of Israel’s 69th birthday, here’s a by the numbers look at Israel’s growing population based on Central Bureau of Statistics via the Times of Israel.

– 8,680,000: overall Israeli population
– 74.4%: Israel’s Jewish population
– 20.8%: Israel’s Arab population
– 4.4%: other ethnic groups in Israel’s population
– 174,000: babies born in last 12 months
– 44,000: deaths in last 12 months
– 30,000: new immigrants in last 12 months
– 1.9%: population growth in last 12 months

Around the World
• Jewish officials hail Austria’s decision to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism already accepted by Israel and the UK.

• Turns out a terror suspect arrested with a rucksack full of knives outside the British parliament building on Thursday was an alumnus of a 2010 Gaza convoy. Khalid Mohamed Omar Ali, a 27-year-old British national, joined the “Hope to Gaza” convoy, which ran parallel to a separate Viva Palestina overland convoy organized by British politician George Galloway. More on Ali’s arrest at The Guardian and Daily Mail.

• Daily Mail: London Metropolitan police armed with machine guns threw Jewish audience members out of a pro-Palestinian event in the parliament building after they asked “disruptive questions.”

• Bad news for BDS efforts on campuses:
– Bath University students reject Israel boycott.
– New Jersey university students vote down BDS resolution.

• Anti-Semitic incidents are at record levels in the UK but declining in France. Why?
• Holocaust denial posters continue to be found posted at Australian universities.

• Former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams backs move to get David Irving’s Holocaust-denying books off Manchester University public shelves. More at The Guardian.

Rowan Williams
Former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

Commentary/Analysis
• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels about Israel and UK academia.

– Brendan O’Neill: This never-ending meltdown over Israel is the distress of fools
– Amb. Mark Regev: I accepted invitation to speak at SOAS to put forward Israel’s case
– Daniel Sugarman: Malia Bouattia has gone, but the NUS still struggles with anti-Semitism
– Daily Telegraph (staff-ed): Student groups must stop targeting Israel

• More broken quills and busted keyboards about the alleged Israeli airstrike on an Iranian arms depot last week:

– Jonathan Schanzer: Russia risks showdown with Israel over Hezbollah in Syria
– Benny Avni: Did Moscow green-light an Israeli attack in Syria?
– Alex Fishman: Greenlighting an Israeli attack on Iran in Syria?
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Israel’s covert war against Hezbollah’s artillery

IAF
Israeli Air Force jet in 2015

• Writing in the Arizona Law Review, Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich examine the issue of “Palestine, uti possidetis juris, and the borders of Israel.”

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

– Yossi Melman: Don’t forget the foreign fighters who sacrificed for Israel’s independence
– Mayor Nir Barkat: Jerusalem rooted in 3,000 years of history.
– Avi Issacharoff: Eyeing his trip to Trump, Abbas takes on Hamas, reins in hunger-strike protests
– Thane Rosenbaum: Palestinians are rewarding terrorists. The US should stop enabling them.
– Ruthie Blum: Birthday suit
– Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman: Mahmoud Abbas goes to Washington: What is at stake?
– Dennis Ross: Common threats offer new opportunities for Israel-GCC cooperation
– Melanie Phillips: The British Foreign Office remains true to type
– Gabe Friedman: Why Radiohead’s Israel show matters
– Jerusalem Post (staff-ed): Getting away with murder

• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see Hanan Ashrawi and James Zogby.

Featured image: by Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90; flags CC BY-NC-ND Avital Pinnick; jet CC BY-NC Israel Defense Forces; Williams CC BY National Assembly for Wales;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04272017-gaza-electricity/
PA Halts Gaza Electricity Payments to Israel
Israel Daily News Stream2 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. Raising the stakes in its power struggle with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority notified Israel that it will no longer cover the costs of electricity that Israel provides to Gaza. Ynet explains:

Israel supplies the Gaza Strip with electricity through 10 power lines that produce 125 megawatts, about 30% of the electricity required in Gaza. The cost of electricity consumption in Gaza is estimated at NIS 40 million (around $11 million) a month—a sum which Israel deducts from the Palestinian Authority taxes.

If the PA refuses to cover Gaza’s electricity bill, payments can also be made through the international community or private entities.

2. BBC News reports that the UK Charity Commission, which registers and regulates British charities, will take a closer look at student unions supporting BDS. What’s the basis for the scrutiny?

Since 2010, students’ unions have become registered charities, meaning they have a legal duty to represent the interests of their members.

According to guidance, public comment should also be limited to matters that affect the welfare of the union’s members as students.

The BBC understands these issues have been raised with the Charity Commission, which is assessing them to determine if any regulatory action should be taken.

A Charity Commission spokesperson said concerns about links to the BDS Movement would be “assessed consistently” and, where appropriate, it would “take regulatory action”.

David Holdsworth, from the commission, said students’ unions must not be discriminatory towards students “of a particular faith or race”.

3. Israel fears new UNESCO resolution will contest its sovereignty over western Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Israel is concerned that the new draft, co-authored by Europe, will include the clause rejecting Israeli sovereignty over Western Jerusalem, a move which threatens to delegitimize the government of the Jewish state, according to diplomats.

Israel’s main governing bodies — its parliament, prime minister’s office, foreign ministry and supreme court — are all located in Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem.

They could not help noting that the cynicism of passing such a resolution on Israel’s Independence Day.
More on Israel’s efforts against the resolution at Ynet.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Israel reportedly struck an Iranian arms depot near Damascus International Airport early Thursday morning. More at Ynet.
• Israeli tanks destroyed a Hamas position along the Gaza border after soldiers doing routine security work came under fire this afternoon.
• President Donald Trump will reportedly recognize entire Jerusalem as Israel’s capital during a visit in late May.
• Hamas tackles fake news:
• Israeli intelligence minister to Reuters: Israel seeks an understanding with the US that Iran must be prevented from setting up a military presence in Syria.
Around the World
• Massachusetts Democrats are moving to kill a proposal for a state party committee to declare Israeli settlements illegal. Party officials said the proposal was unbalanced and would cost Democrats Jewish votes. Boston Globe coverage.
• Minnesota Legislature approves anti-BDS measure
• Critics slammed City University of New York for inviting Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour to give a commencement address, reports the JTA and Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter).

Sarsour made waves in March when she declared that there’s no room for Zionism in the feminist movement.

• A UK Liberal Democrat candidate was sacked over anti-Semitism allegations. In recent years, David Ward posted a blog comparing the treatment of Palestinians by “Jews” to the Holocaust, questioned the right of “apartheid Israel” to exist, and suggested he was ready to fire rockets at Israel from Gaza. Daily Telegraph coverage.

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

– Raphael Ahren: Why Netanyahu gave Germany’s FM the Silence treatment
– Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: This is how we intimidate journalists
– Dr. Reuven Berko: Who’s afraid of Marwan Barghouti?
– Kobi Richter: In Mideast peace efforts, Israel must deal its own cards
– Teodora Coptil: EU-Israel relations: Trojan horses, snakes, ladders and boycotts
– Yossi Melman: North Korea and the Jewish question

Featured image: CC BY Robert Couse-Baker; light bulb CC0 Pixabay; money CC BY-NC-ND Bryan Jones; Sarsour CC BY Festival of Faiths;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04252017-abbas-money/
Abbas to Shut Off Money to Gaza and Hamas?
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Sources close to Mahmoud Abbas told the Times of Israel the PA chief may cut off all cash to Gaza. The ultimatum to Hamas: Accept our rule or we’ll stop paying your bills. This “would constitute official recognition of the split between Gaza and the West Bank, a divide that over the past decade Fatah and Hamas refused to acknowledge.”

Consequences on the ground would include making the Strip’s energy crisis even more acute, an end to Gaza medical transfers to Israel currently paid by Ramallah, and the possibility of Hamas sparking a new conflict with Israel to divert Palestinian attention.

2. The Trump administration is planning a major revamp in the way US foreign aid is disbursed as well as various cutbacks. Foreign Policy obtained a copy of the 15-page State Department document. Parsing the numbers, Haaretz reports that Egypt and Jordan would face deep cuts while the Palestinian Authority would see a modest increase:

The documents are an internal budget plan that seems in line with the administration’s stated goal of a deep cut of more than a third of the State Department and USAID’s total budget. They show major cuts in foreign aid to numerous countries in all continents, but a small rise of 4.6% in foreign aid to the West Bank and Gaza, which would go up to $215 million for the 2018 fiscal year . . .

The document proposes a 47.4% cut to Egypt’s aid – a surprising policy in light of the warm and friendly way in which Trump has treated Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi. It also proposed a 21% cut to foreign aid to Jordan, whose leader, King Abdullah, is the only world leader to have been invited to meet the president twice since his inauguration.
Former US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro weighed in:

3. The US is gearing up to defeat another Israel-bashing resolution due for UNESCO debate next week, according to Israeli media reports.

Next Monday, UNESCO is set to vote on a resolution that includes clauses denying any Jewish connection to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, and that attacks Israel for the killing of children in Gaza, Israel’s Channel 10 news reported Monday.
Meanwhile, UNESCO chief Irina Bokova denounced her own agency’s governing board for passing resolutions in recent months denying Jewish ties to Jerusalem holy sites.
Israel and the Palestinians
Sigmar Gabriel
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel

• UPDATE: As this roundup was being published, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed Netanyahu’s talks with Gabriel were cancelled.
According to Israeli media reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned visiting German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel against meeting with representatives of left-wing non-governmental organizations B’tselem and Breaking the Silence.

According to Channel 2 news, when Netanyahu learned of his planned meetings with representatives of the leftist organizations, his office sent a message to the German delegation that this was provocative behavior.

However, in an attempt to compromise with the Germans, Netanyahu’s office made it clear to Gabriel that it would not object to a junior representative meeting the organizations on Gabriel’s behalf.
Gabriel said in response that his meetings with the two NGOs would go on as scheduled and that it would be “regrettable” and “unthinkable” if the Prime Minister’s Office scrapped his time with Netanyahu.

• Worth reading: The Daily Telegraph takes a closer look at whether imprisoned Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti can lead the Palestinians to peace, and also what’s motivating his current hunger strike:

But Israel’s government sees something bigger than prison issues in the strike. They believe Barghouti is flexing his political muscles and sending a message to Palestinian leaders by showing how he can unite prisoners from different political factions under his leadership.

“Barghouti’s strike is motivated by internal Palestinian political motives and therefore includes unreasonable demands regarding prisoner conditions,” said Gilad Erdan, Israel’s public security minister.
See Khaled Abu Toameh‘s related tweet of the day.


• IDF soldiers thwarted a Palestinian stabbing attack near a West Bank army base this afternoon.

• The Jerusalem Post picked on a report by the European Union Institute for Security Studies suggesting a link between rising summer temperatures and Mideast violence. The EUISS calls it a “heat hypothesis.”

• Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland: Security of Israel is a key in Canada’s fight against Islamic State.

• Regarding yesterday’s stabbing attack at the Qalandiya checkpoint . . .


• Jerusalem Post: “IDF Military Advocate General Brig.-Gen. Sharon Afek hinted strongly on Tuesday that he will approve a wider range of Lebanese targets than were approved in the 2006 Lebanon War in the event of a new war with Hezbollah.”

While legal advisers like the MAG never completely share their hand in advance of a war of what targets they will approve, it is even rare for such advisers to publicly and specifically cite a potential targeting issue . . .

However, since 2006, Israeli officials have said that Hezbollah has taken deeper control of the state and that the Lebanese state is now more directly supporting even Hezbollah’s military efforts.
• I’m not sorry to hear Abd al-Rahim Ahmed Atik now rests in pieces:

Terrorist who commanded infamous 1987 glider attack killed in Syria

• A Knesset ceremony marking Yom HaShoah shined a light on overlooked Sephardi victims of the Holocaust as MKs read the names of murdered family members from North Africa, Turkey and Greece. I had no idea there were 17 North African Nazi camps located in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

Around the World
• BDS founder Omar Barghouti received the Gandhi Peace Award from the Connecticut-based group Promoting Enduring Peace. The New Haven Register reported that

. . . Yale University officials issued an unusual statement distancing the university from endorsing the Gandhi event despite the fact it took place in a Yale building.
Although Barghouti is under investigation for tax evasion, an Israeli judge allowed him to travel abroad. Haaretz adds that Barghouti also spoke at New York’s Columbia University and scheduled a pair of events with Jewish Voices for Peace.

Last but not least, the New Haven Register gave an op-ed soapbox to four Connecticut Jewish leaders unpacking why Barghouti isn’t fit for any peace awards. Honoring those like Barghouti will make ‘enduring peace’ much less attainable.

Omar Barghouti
Omar Barghouti, 2011

• Times of Israel: Scholar whose work was used to justify Palestinian terror tapped to head US air force.

• Pro-Palestinian academics and students snowflakes at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies are trying to force the cancellation of a speaking appearance by Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev. More at The Guardian.

• Flyers making anti-Semitic, racist and anti-immigrant statements were found in several locations around the Princeton University campus. More on the story at the Daily Princetonian and JTA.

• Administrators from several Australian universities condemned flyers questioning the historical accuracy of the Holocaust which appeared on a number of campuses Down Under.

• Britain’s National Union of Students is in a new anti-Semitism row over a series of offensive tweets in which candidates for top positions in the union posted messages mocking and insulting Jews. The Independent explains:

In online posts seen by The Independent, one current member of the union’s National Executive Council shared a video mocking Jews as having big noses and being tight with money, while another publicly suggested Jewish people are tight-fisted and said he wanted to destroy Israel.

A third, who is seeking a position on the union’s executive in elections being held this week, wrote an offensive Twitter message referring to Jews and using the phrase “Heil Hitler”.

The Independent can also reveal that, during her time as a student at York University, Malia Bouattia, the current NUS president, was involved in hosting a play called “Seven Jewish Children” that has been widely criticised as anti-Semitic.
Commentary/Analysis
• I’m glad Seth Frantzman picked up on something I was wondering myself:

86% Rise in US anti-Semitism? Half of it was caused by one Jewish Israeli.

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

– Jonathan Tobin: Does Iran have a veto on Israeli-Palestinian peace?
– Jamal Barakat: Marwan Barghouti is a convicted murderer. Nothing more.
– Elliott Abrams: The need to change Palestinian political culture
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: The battle over the Golan Heights
– Charles Wald and Michael Makovsky: The two faces of Qatar, a dubious Mideast ally
– Jennifer Rubin: The least surprising statistic
– Avi Dichter: Thou shalt not take the Holocaust in vain
– Marc Schulman: Two takes on what the Holocaust means today
– Giora Eiland: Hitler Youth members must take responsibility for their actions

Featured image: CC0 Craig Dennis; money spigot vectors from Vecteezy and freedesignfile; Gabriel CC BY SPD Schleswig-Holstein; Barghouti via YouTube/rabble.ca News for the rest of us;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04242017-marine-le-pen/
French Jews Wary as Marine Le Pen Heads to Final Vote
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. French Jews are worried about the continuing electoral success of far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

Meanwhile, Russian Chief Rabbi, Berel Lazar called on French Jewry to leave France if Le Pen wins a May 7 runoff against Emmanuel Macron, a centrist independent candidate.

Le Pen and Macron
French presidential finalists Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron

2. It turns out that the 18 year-old Palestinian terrorist arrested for injuring four Israelis in yesterday’s Tel Aviv stabbing attack had entered Israel on a one-day “peace pass.” The passes, which are issued to groups fostering relations between Israelis and Palestinians, have been suspended pending an investigation. More at the Times of Israel.

3. Israel marked Yom HaShoah. See below for related articles remembering the Holocaust.

4. Hearing the Politics of Despair For Ourselves: HR’s Field Trip to the Gaza Border Region: Following an HonestReporting tour of the Israel-Gaza border, an award-winning journalist shares her thoughts.

In the News
• A Palestinian woman stabbed a soldier at the Kalandiya checkpoint near Jerusalem this morning.

• The terrorist accused of killing a British student will be paid £800 a month by the Palestinian government which receives £25m-a-year UK foreign aid

• Australian piercing shop declares, ‘No Israelis served here.’ Owner Mark Bryce explained his stance to the Cairns Post.

• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: Denial of Israel’s right to exist is a ‘modern form of anti-Semitism.’

Antonio Guterres
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

• Social media fuels rising UK anti-Semitism, report finds.


Remembering Yom HaShoah
• The BBC examines Yad Vashem’s race against time to identify the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. The memorial center has so far identified by name 4.7 million of the murdered Jews.

“Every new name we can add to our database is a victory against the Nazis, against the intent of the Nazis to wipe out the Jewish people. Every new name is a small victory against oblivion.”
• Secret UN files reveal Allied leaders knew about Nazi death camps ‘long before D-Day.’

• Video: Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance) Siren 2017: Israel came to a complete standstill this morning.

• Israel’s oldest Holocaust museum recasts lessons as ‘a warning sign.’

• Here’s what else I’m reading about Yom HaShoah:

– Efraim Zuroff: The real danger: Holocaust distortion
– Ronen Bergman: And Netanyahu remains silent
– Yoaz Hendel: It’s time to recover from the Holocaust

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

– Amos Harel: Hezbollah’s PR provocation on border comes at a good time for Israel
– New York Post (staff-ed): End the US taxpayer subsidy for Palestinian terror
– Denis MacEoin: How new is the new Hamas charter?
– Jonathan Schanzer: Time for the US to stop Qatar’s support for terror
– Jim Molan: Puppet-state Lebanon a pawn for ambitious Iran
– Ali Alfoneh: Hezbollah battlefield deaths defending Assad mount up


Featured image: CC BY KellyB.; Le Pen CC BY-SA Global Panorama; Macron CC BY-NC Mutualite Francaise; Guterres CC BY-NC-ND UN Geneva;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04232017-syria-strike-hits-israel/
Syrian Mortars Hit Israel
Israel Daily News Stream9 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
BREAKING: a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv has left several wounded. At the time of publishing this IDNS we are still in very early stages and information is limited, but apparently the attack took place either near or in several hotels at the Tel Aviv waterfront and a Palestinian suspect has reportedly been placed under arrest. The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz have continuing updates.

According to journalist Seth Frantzman, Palestinian media is reporting this as an attack on “settlers” in “occupied Palestine.” To be clear: they’re talking about Tel Aviv.

1. Several mortar shells from Syria landed inside Israel this week. Israel responded by attacking the locations from which the mortars had been fired. The IDF said:

The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm the sovereignty of the State of Israel or the security of its residents and will see the Syrian regime responsible for what happens within its territory.
These sorts of events have happened from time to time, and it is not always clear whether the fire into Israel is accidental or an intentional attempt to test Israel’s responses. In either case this calls to mind a quote from Mario Puzo’s classic novel and movie The Godfather:

Accidents don’t happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.
Indeed, Israel’s consistent, strong responses seem to have caused fighting parties in Syria to be especially careful about not letting their conflict spill across the Israeli border.

2. The Palestinian terrorist accused of killing a British student last week will be paid £800 (about $1,000) per month by the Palestinian government. To put this in perspective: an average Palestinian worker earns about $450 per month, which means that in reward for one day of terror, Hannah Bladon’s murderer will receive more than double a typical full time Palestinian salary, every month for the rest of his life…or at least until the world finally puts a stop to this practice.

The Palestinian Authority government, in defiance of international pressure, is actually increasing its budget for salaries to terrorists: in 2016 it was up to $180 Million. That budget is funded in part by the UK which provides £25 million (about $32 Million) per year in foreign aid. In other words, UK taxpayers are actually paying a salary to the terrorist who murdered one of their own citizens. This issue grew in visibility after the near murder of UK citizen Kay Wislon, who’s would-be murderers reportedly receive £9,000 per year. Wilson survived only because the terrorists had believed she was already dead.

In case you missed the story when it first came out: Last week Jamil Tamimi had stabbed a UK exchange student to death on Jerusalem’s light rail train. The victim, 21 year old Hannah Bladon, was a student University of Birmingham and had been doing an exchange program at Israel’s Hebrew University.


3. Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to meet with US Defense Secretary James Mattis on Friday. One topic that will feature prominently on the agenda will be Israel’s concern about Iran establishing a permanent base in Syria the day after the civil war there ends. Many of us have been so preoccupied by the horrors of the Syrian civil war, that it is easy to forget the dangers yet to come after the fighting comes to an end. In this case, Israel may have a number of receptive ears: Mattis and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have echoed similar concerns about Iran’s influence in Syria, as has US ally Saudi Arabia

Israel and the Palestinians
• Gaza is suffering an electricity shortage, and it turns out to have nothing to do with Israel but rather political rivalries between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Here’s how it works: Israel provides fuel for electric plants to the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank (the “PA”), who then sells it to Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization that rules in Gaza. Yet Hamas has stopped paying its electric bills to the PA, and the PA has decided to stop providing fuel until the bill is paid. Meanwhile, Hamas seems to have no shortage of funds for its continuing construction of terror tunnels, which cost roughly $3 Million a piece. The real losers in all of this? The people of Gaza, who are about to face a typically hot Mediterranean summer with limited electrical power. This background will be worth remembering when the inevitable blaming of Israel begins to hit the news.

• The May Fair Hotel in London has refused a request by the Palestinian Authority government to screen a movie called “Marwan: A film about the life and struggle of Marwan Barghouti.” Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for terrorism and murder, is also a co-founder and leader of the the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an internationally recognized terror organization that targets Israeli civilians for violent attacks. The PA government had requested the screening to take place on Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. In case you didn’t know the meaning of the Yiddish word “chutzpa,” this is pretty much it.

• One of two Palestinian women from Gaza who tried to smuggle explosives into the Israeli hospital where she was receiving cancer treatments has been released by Israeli authorities. Apparently, authorities concluded that she was duped into carrying an object that contained explosives without her knowledge. However, the other suspect is still being held.

Around the World
• The Israeli cabinet is expected to ratify an agreement on Sunday with China relating to the employment of Chinese workers in Israel. Israel and China engaged in negotiations for several years over an agreement on Chinese citizens coming to work in Israel. In 2015, the talks faltered over China’s demand that Chinese laborers in Israel not be employed in the settlements. The official reason given by the Chinese was concern for the workers’ personal safety, but officials at the Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed the view that the real reason was political, relating to the fact that China and the rest of the international community view the settlements as illegal and their locations as occupied territory. While this is not an unfamiliar story, it does carry a certain irony: many of the construction workers who do work in West Bank settlements are Palestinian.

•. For some time, European leaders and the United Nations have been pressuring FIFA (the International Federation of Association Football – that’s “soccer” for you Americans…) to take action against Israeli soccer teams based in the West Bank, while Palestinian leaders have been pressuring FIFA to exclude Israel from competition entirely. It appears the issue is once again on FIFA’s agenda and the pressure may be about to work, as a cable from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to various embassies leaked by an anonymous official to Haaretz, seems to indicate:

Our growing assessment is that the FIFA Congress is liable to make a decision on suspending six Israeli teams that play over the Green Line, or even on suspending Israel from FIFA.
Israeli diplomats in a number of countries have reportedly been directed by the Foreign Ministry to try to persuade host countries to ask FIFA to take the matter off the agenda.

Commentary/Analysis
• As we approach Yom Hashoah (Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day) Israeli MK Einat Wilf discusses a modern counterpart to Holocaust denial: Zionism denial. She points out that when President Obama spoke directly to the Arab world at Cairo University in 2009:

…he did not understand that by reaffirming the dangerous equation that the global legitimacy for Israel is rooted in the Holocaust, he fanned the motivation to engage in Holocaust denial for those who continue to believe, as they always have, that Israel is not a legitimate state.
In what may be the most succinct summary of what Zionism truly is (at least that I’ve seen in a long time) MK Wilf explains:

Israel exists not because the Europeans dumped the surviving Jews in the colonially controlled Middle East. Israel exists because the Jews willed it into existence. The modern state of Israel exists because the Jews who created it believed themselves to be descendants of the Israelites and Judeans who were sovereign there in ancient times and paid a high price for preserving their separate existence as a people.
• Journalist and analyst Tom Gross weighs in on Donald Trump’s decision to carry out a limited bombing campaign in response to Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons. At this point the topic is not a new one, but some of Gross’s insights are. Worth a look…

• It’s been a while since Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been front page news, with much argument over whether Iran truly is working to develop nuclear weapons now that the JCPOA (the “Iran nuclear deal”) is in place. Jenna Lifhits analyzes Iran’s current centrifuge activity and concludes that the nuclear ambitions remain as alive and active as ever.

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

– Jamie Dettmer: Iranian Militia Role in Syria, Iraq Prompts Alarm
– Dani Dayan: Support for Israel Must Not Become Partisan
– Elliot Abrams: Stop Supporting Palestinian Terror

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04202017-israel-calls-out-syria-on-more-chemical-weapons/
Israel Calls Out Syria on (More!) Chemical Weapons
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. According to Israeli defense officials, Syria still has up to three tons of chemical weapons. Earlier this month a chemical attack in Syria killed over 80 people in a particularly gruesome manner. Director-general, Ahmet Uzumcu of the international chemical weapons watchdog the “Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” said laboratory tests had provided “incontrovertible” evidence that victims and survivors of the April 4 attack in northern Syria were exposed to sarin nerve gas or a similar banned toxin, while Israeli Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman said that he had “100 percent certainty” that Syrian President Bashar Assad was himself directly responsible.

In 2014, the United States negotiated the removal of Assad’s chemical weapons supply, culminating with then Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement:

With respect to Syria, we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out.
However, roughly a month after Kerry’s statement Israel announced that it had evidence that Syria was continuing to hide “significant” amounts of chemical weapons in breach of the agreement, and earlier this month Israel’s assessment proved to be (tragically) correct. Now Israel is once again warning of Assad’s weapons arsenal.

The lesson of recent history? It is a good idea to take Israeli assessments on this particular topic very, very seriously.

2. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned that Iran could “follow the same path as North Korea” in pursuing nuclear weapons and putting global security at risk. US President Donald Trump made contradictory promises during the campaign as to what his policy would be toward Iran, but his positions and actions regarding Syria, North Korea and Afghanistan seem to indicate that he is open to creating deterrence through military actions. Somewhat paradoxically, at about the same time the Trump administration has notified Congress that Iran is complying with the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama, and says the U.S. has extended the sanctions relief given to the Islamic republic in exchange for curbs on its atomic program. See our Commentary/Analysis section below, for Michael Oren’s thoughts on the issue.

3. More than 100 Boston-area researchers in health care and life sciences released a statement in defense of “the liberal ideals which have shaped our democracy” and in support of “the free flow of ideas and information” that is central to their work. Why take the time to re-affirm something so obvious? To stop academic blacklisting by BDS (the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement) which targets Israeli academics and universities. At a time when some liberals have adopted anti-Israel positions, it is refreshing to see this reminder that Israel exemplifies liberal ideals, and that support for Israel ought to be natural for one who believes in such values.

4. The agenda driven Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence hosts tours for foreign journalists which paint a misleading picture of Israel’s reality. In this case, The Irish Times has published an essay by author Eimear McBride, in which she buys the NGO’s message “hook, line and sinker,” with no independent research or balance. HonestReporting examines in this critique.

Israel and the Palestinians
• US President Donald Trump will be hosting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Whitehouse on May 3. According to White House spokesman Sean Spicer:

They will use the visit to reaffirm the commitment of both the United States and Palestinian leadership to pursuing and ultimately concluding a conflict-ending settlement between the Palestinians and Israel.
• Yet another ramming terror attack: this time at a bus stop at the Gush Etzion Junction in the West Bank. One pedestrian, a 60 year old man, was treated for a head injury. The attacker, 21-year-old Suhaib Mashahra, from the village of Sawahreh near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, was shot and killed by Israeli troops while carrying out the attack. As usual, the Reuters coverage emphasizes the death of the terrorist over the attack itself and, of course, makes no mention of the words “terror” or “terrorism.” It could be worse: in the past Reuters has neglected to even mention that the attacker was…well, attacking.

Around the World
• According to a new poll by the Anti-Defamation League, a majority of Americans are concerned about violence against Jews and Muslims. Of the 5,100 people who were interviewed, 52% were troubled by anti-Semitic violence. Seventy-six percent of those polled were disturbed by violence against Muslims. While most do not believe Trump is personally anti-Semitic, about half believe he should have done more to discourage anti-Semitism during his campaign. An overwhelming 95% of Americans say Trump is anti-Muslim and 53% say he is anti-Latino. At the risk of injecting a bit of reality into the discussion, FBI figures show that in 2015 (the most recent data available) 51.3% of religion based hate crimes were directed against Jews, while less than half that number, 22.3%, were directed against Muslims. At just under 5% each were crimes against Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants and others.

Commentary/Analysis
• With all the attention focused on chemical weapons in Syria and nuclear tests in North Korea, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and current MK Michael Oren penns an op-ed entitled, “We’re turning a blind eye to Iran’s genocidal liars.” Oren goes on to explain that while North Korea and Syria breached their respective agreements,

[the agreement with Iran] is so inherently flawed that Tehran doesn’t even have to break it. Honouring it will be enough to endanger millions of lives.
Oren explains that the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal struck by the Obama administration) allows Iran to make significant progress toward becoming a nuclear power without even violating the terms of the deal, all while enjoying billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Thus, when most of the deal’s provisions conclude in roughly ten years, it will be essentially impossible for international powers to stop Iran from quickly going nuclear. This is assuming that Iran doesn’t breach the JCPOA sooner. However, Oren provides a note of hope, along with a warning:

How can the US and its allies pre-empt catastrophe? Many steps are possible, but they begin with penalising Iran for the conventions it already violates, such as UN restrictions on missile development…in responding forcibly to North Korean and Syrian outrages, President Trump has taken a major step towards restoring America’s deterrence power. His determination to redress the flaws in the JCPOA and to stand up to Iran will greatly accelerate that process. The US, Israel and the world will all be safer.
If you are unable to read the original op-ed in The Australian due to the paywall, a copy is available on this private blog from Joseph Wouk. (HonestReporting has no relationship with, and does not endorse this blog: the link is provided for convenience only).

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

– Reuven Ben-Shalom: No Nelson Mandela
– Jim Michaels: How the U.S. Helped Win a Battle Against ISIS in Libya
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Barghouti Is Intentionally Lying
Featured image: CC0 macadam13;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04192017-nyt-publishes-terror-leaders-op-ed/
NYT Publishes Terror Leader’s Op-Ed
Israel Daily News Stream9 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. In tandem with a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, The New York Times published an scathing anti-Israel op-ed by convicted murderer and notorious terrorist Marwan Barghouti. In addition to not calling out Barghouti for any of his incorrect facts, the New York Times described him in the “by-line” merely as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.” In fact, Barghouti is a notorious convicted murderer and terrorist, head of the Tanzim terror group and a co-founder of the associated Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is designated as a terror organization by (among others) Canada, the EU, the United States and Israel.

Originally published on a Jewish holiday (we don’t know if that was on purpose) Barghouti’s op-ed was soon followed by responses from Israeli MK Yair Lapid and PM Netanyahu.

Netahnyahu’s statement included this point:

Calling Barghouti a ‘political leader’ is like calling Assad a ‘pediatrician.’
while Lapid’s statement clarified that:

Barghouti doesn’t only believe in violence, he also believes that its permissible to lie. The attempt by the New York Times “to be balanced” amuses Barghouti.
(Both statements are worth reading in their entirety, by clicking on the links above).

To their credit, the New York Times have appended an “editor’s note” to the op-ed with some of the missing context, and their Public Editor Liz Spayd penned a strong response to the op-ed, which she also shared on Twitter:

While the New York Times response is welcome, it did not come soon enough to prevent numerous other publications from quoting Barghouti’s op-ed without appropriate context and without even mentioning the New York Times corrections.

2. In a bid to spur international criticism of Israel, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have begun a hunger strike. Demands include: increased family visitation rights, improved medical services, ending administrative detention and greater access to educational materials (an ironic demand coming from strike leader Marwan Barghouti – see item #1 above – who had so much access to educational materials that he completed a PhD from within Israeli prison). It should be noted that Barghouti is positioning himself as a potential successor to Mahmoud Abbas, as head of the Palestinian Authority government. Barghouti (already a prisoner in Israeli jail for several counts of murder and terrorism) has since been placed in solitary confinement.

3. Turkey has long been known as a unique example of a Mulsim country that is also a secular democracy, with significant freedom and diversity. However, a sweeping referendum changes Turkeys fundamental constitution, and consolidates greater power in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While the country remains highly divided and the result is still contested, some critics see this as the end of the modern day, secular Turkey envisioned by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and even a return to the days of the Islamic empire of the Sultans. In March 1949 Turkey became the first Muslim majority country to recognize the State of Israel and despite tensions in recent years, Turkey has remained an important ally and conduit to the Muslim world. For these reasons, the future of Turkey is of critical importance to Israel.

4. HonestReporting follows up on the New York Times op-ed by Marwan Barghouti, exposing his lies, half truths, and the New York Times journalistic failures: sanitizing of a terrorist by giving him a public platform while failing to provide readers with critical facts and context. Check our article on this topic for regular updates.

5. The Times of London is one of the numerous publications that slams Israel on behalf of terror leader and convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti, while sanitizing his bloody history. HonestReporting critiques.

Mideast Matters
• A senior Hamas official says threats by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cannot force the group to cede control in the Gaza Strip. Seeking to put pressure on Hamas, Abbas has slashed the salaries of thousands of former civil servants in Gaza and imposed a tax on fuel shipments to Hamas-ruled Gaza. Though details are currently sparse, this is a story worth watching: it will undoubtedly unfold in the weeks and months to come, with far reaching consequences.

• A young Saudi woman, Dina Ali Lasloom, was stopped in an airport in the Philippines at the request of Saudi Embassy officials in Manila, while she was en route to Australia where she planned to seek asylum. In Saudi Arabia women face tremendous oppression and among other things, travelling abroad without a male companion is a crime. In a video Lasloom says:

If my family come, they will kill me. If I go back to Saudi Arabia, I will be dead. Please help me.
Strangely, Manila Airport General Manager Eddie Monreal told the AP he had no knowledge about the case and an immigration official reached by the AP said the airport’s immigration officers neither detained nor held any passenger under that name, yet reports out of Saudi Arabia indicate that she has already been returned to her country of origin.

• Three people were injured in clashes between local tribes and members of Islamic State in the Sinai. The unrest started when Islamic State forces shot at a truck smuggling cigarettes into the area, where the Islamic State imposes a strict version of Islamic law that prohibits the sale of tobacco, tribal sources said. For some time Egypt has been fighting against Islamic State and other terror groups in the Sinai, including Hamas. Israel recently issued a travel warning to Israelis against visiting the region which remains chaotic and not under clear control by any one group or government.

Commentary/Analysis
• Newly released historical records show that the Allied powers knew about the Nazi death camps much sooner and to a much greater extent than ever realized, yet they still failed to act. The Allies also prepared to bring numerous prosecutions against lower and mid-level Nazis for war crimes, many of which were never pursued. British historian Dan Plesch points out that we can learn much from the failures and successes of World War II and apply that knowledge to reduce the suffering in modern day Syria.

• Even in the wake of mass genocide and poison gas attacks in Syria, the spread of Islamic State, a refugee crisis that has spread as far as Europe, and the utter meltdown of numerous countries throughout the Middle East, most Arab (and even many Western) leaders continue to absurdly claim that the conflict between Israel and Palestinians is central to the region, if not the world. Writing in the Australian, David Suissa fiercely debunks that persistent myth, with a critical review of established facts and current events.

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

– Barbara Kay: How academics portray Islam as a’ victim’ of oppression — even as they defend violent Islamists
– Olivia B. Waxman: The U.S. Intervened in Syria in 1949. Here’s What Happened
– Benjamin Weinthal: How Iran Enables Syria’s Chemical Warfare Against Civilians

Featured image: CC BY Thomas8047;

http://honestreporting.com/idns-04062017-israelus-blame-assad-for-syria-chemical-attack/
Israel/US Blame Assad for Syria Chemical Attack
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. One of the worst chemical bombings in Syria turned a northern rebel-held area into a toxic kill zone on Tuesday, inciting international outrage over the ever-increasing government impunity shown in the country’s six-year war. The United States has blamed Bashar Assad while Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said that he has “100 percent certainty” that Assad himself was directly responsible for the attack:

The murderous chemical weapons attacks on citizens in Idlib province in Syria and on a local hospital were carried out on the direct order and planned by the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, using Syrian planes.
Syria has denied responsibility for the attack, so the US accusation and Liberman’s statement (presumably based on Israeli intelligence) are significant. Liberman also said Israel would not become involved militarily to stop the bloodshed, but called on the international community to help do so. Some in Israel have urged that the country “do something,” in some cases invoking comparisons to nations who stood idly by during the Holocaust. We touched on this topic in yesterday’s IDNS, and pointed out that while it’s simple to generically call for Israel to “do something,” what that “something” could realistically be is a more complex question. Several issues to consider:

Full scale invasion/occupation of Syria isn’t a realistic option for Israel acting alone;
Even limited attacks on Assad’s forces or resources without international backing could put Israel into the dangerous position of being in combat against Russia, who has been backing Assad militarily;
A power vacuum left by an attack on Assad’s forces may be filled by Islamic State (ISIS), Al Qaeda linked groups, or others: unless Israel were to take an active role on the ground to prevent that;
Limited pinpoint strikes on specific military targets would more or less replicate what the international community has already been doing since 2011, apparently to little effect;
Diplomacy and pressure also seem to have been ineffective: in 2014, in what was claimed to be a diplomatic victory of sorts, the Obama administration announced that removal of chemical weapons from Syria had been “completed.” Obviously, that was not, and still is not, the case.
This is not to say that there isn’t some action that Israel acting alone could potentially take, but it is not at all clear what that action might be. When the world acts together, the practical options become significantly greater.

2. A series of explosions were heard at a military compound belonging to Lebanese terror group Hezbollah near the Syrian capital of Damascus, local media in Syria reported in the early morning hours of Thursday. According to local media, an “unidentified attack” was also reported against Hezbollah forces and Syrian government troops in a suburb of Daraa in southern Syria, in the Syrian Golan Heights. Reports in the Hebrew-language media said the attack was a battle between rebel fighters and Syrian and Hezbollah forces. In the past, Israel has reportedly attacked Hezbollah positions and weapons convoys in Syria, though there are many rival factions fighting in Syria and attacks can come from any number of different sources.

3. There’s a new Hamas charter…or is there? The “new Hamas charter” is apparently unacceptable to Hamas leadership in Gaza. (Hamas has leadership in Qatar as well as in Gaza). This begs the question: can this charter actually be adopted without leadership support, or will it merely fizzle and disappear? As if there weren’t enough questions already: it is not even clear whether the charter is actually a charter at all (which would presumably replace the Hamas Covenant document of 1988 which calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of all Jews), or whether it is merely a “political document” that does not replace the existing charter, as some sources have indicated. In any case one thing is already clear from leaks of the text: the new document calls for a Palestinian state based on “pre-1967 borders” but paradoxically, also calls for the total destruction of Israel. When interest groups inevitably use this document as an excuse to cast Hamas as “reasonable” or “moderate” in the days and weeks to come, it is worth keeping these points in mind.

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Israel and the Palestinians
• Hamas offers clemency to “Israeli collaborators” after killing, as it probes the murder of one of its officials in Gaza that it blames on Israel. As we discussed in a previous IDNS, senior Hamas figure Mazen Faqha was assassinated last week in Gaza and Hamas has taken the position that the assassination was carried out by Israel with local collaborators in Gaza, however Israel has not confirmed this and Defense Minister Avidgdor Liberman has indicated that the assassination was carried out by Hamas rivals. Apparently, if Israeli allies and collaborators in Gaza turn themselves in within a week then in return Hamas will spare their lives. The interior ministry said in an official statement:

The doors of repentance will be open for one week, from Tuesday, April 4 to Tuesday, April 11
Palestinians who have any relations with Israel are considered traitors to their people and believe death is the appropriate punishment.

• An Israeli soldier was killed and another lightly wounded in a car-ramming attack in the central West Bank on Thursday morning, officials said. The Palestinian driver of the car was captured by the Israel Defense Forces, an army spokesperson said. Of the two victims, the one who died was named as Sgt. Elhai Teharlev, 20, from the settlement of Talmon. The two victims were standing on the sidewalk near a bus stop when the terrorist driving a silver Audi struck them. Some claim that Palestinian terrorism is a struggle against oppression, yet there is a certain dark irony when one “struggles against oppression” by making a weapon out of such a high-end luxury automobile.

• Israel’s Labor Party has delayed its primaries due to the Britney Spears concert. Yes, you read that right. The official word is the concert will require so many security guards and generate so much traffic that it will leave insufficient resources for the primaries. Is it also possible that some party members merely wish to attend the show? We won’t even speculate on that…

Around the World
• New Zealand Jewish Council president Stephen Goodman says Anti-Semitism on rise in New Zealand, and is particularly prevalent on social media.

A lot of anti-Semitism comes out of ignorance and thinking this is a fashionable thing to do…I don’t think that legislating really works. The real issue is education.
Recently, New Zealand colleges and universities such as Queenstown Resort College had posters and flyers promoting nazi-fascism and containing anti-semitic slurs. Alt-right groups have spoken out on social media claiming that the tearing down of posters is a violation of free speech.

• In the UK, MP Ken Livingstone continues to make headlines, as he doubles down again and again on his anti-Semitic rhetoric, and it is raising ire from within his party. One hundred Labour MPs attacked their party’s failure to kick out Ken Livingstone yesterday as he gave a series of defiant interviews defending his Hitler comments. Tom Watson, the deputy leader, and Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, were among a string of senior figures who said they were “ashamed” that Mr Livingstone had not been expelled. Yet party leader Jeremy Corbyn is apparently less ashamed, holding to his decision to suspend Livingstone for one year rather than to remove him from the party. Perhaps it is because Corbyn is actually sympathetic to Livingstone’s positions: Corbyn has a history of making Jewish leaders uncomfortable by, among other things, frequently defending his associations with leaders from the Hamas and Hezbollah terror organizations.

Commentary/Analysis
• Outside the this year’s AIPAC conference was a mass of protesters. Why? And what do they want? A thoughtful analysis by Daniel Gordis entitled, “American Protesters’ Cause Isn’t Clear to Israel” takes a detailed look at some of the primarily young, American groups that are highly critical of Israel. Some claim to be “pro-Israel” even as they act in a way that appears antagonistic: including in some cases supporting BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) against Israel. Gordis concludes that in some cases the groups are more interested in “venting anti-establishment rage” than actually engaging in real advocacy: ready to list everything they oppose, but short on practical ideas they might wish to see implemented. In one example, the ADL’s Jonathan A. Greenblatt invited protesters outside his office from a group called “If Not Now” to come inside and discuss their grievances: the group refused, preferring to remain in the lobby and create a disturbance in order to be publicly arrested. Other groups profess to be against “the occupation,” but upon closer inspection, they prove to be referring to the “occupation” that began in 1948, meaning that they are against Israel’s existence at all. Gordis examines numerous examples and provides much thoughtful analysis, while also raising critical questions about how this may impact the future relationship between American Jews and Israelis. Worth a read.

• The Guardian wrote a scathing indictment of Livingstone’s anti-Semitism in the form of a staff editorial, one of the most supportive pieces of journalism regarding the UK Jewish community we’ve seen in years. Among other criticisms, the staff editorial does not hesitate to call out Livingstone and the labor party in general for disguising anti-Semitism as if it were legitimate criticism of Israel. Here are a couple highlights, though the entire editorial is certainly worth a read:

A presumption can take hold that … the left is opposed to all racism. Warped logic then unfolds: anti-racists cannot be guilty of prejudice against Jews, so it follows that Jewish complaints about prejudice are dishonest. The offence is pushed back on to the people who thought they had been offended. It is reconfigured as a plot to discredit political foes; part of a hidden agenda connected to Israel-Palestine.
Mr Livingstone’s statements and unapologetic stances ooze contempt for the Jewish community. He has had every opportunity to moderate his language, rephrase his opinions and seek conciliation. Instead he has chosen gleeful defiance.
Every significant Jewish community body, every respectable historian, and every organisation that studies the Holocaust, to learn its lessons, has said that Mr Livingstone’s language is unacceptable. Most Jews think it was hurtful. But a Labour committee has decided not to mind their pain.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Daniel Polisar: Do Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution?
– John Rossomando: Panelists Prove That Jewish Voice for Peace Is Neither
– Evelyn Gordon: ISIS Borrows a Tactic from Hamas


Featured image: CC BY-NC Nicolas Mirguet;

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