Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Catherine Ashton says Palestinian stone-throwing is legitimate non-violent protest. Israeli watches warily as Iranian nuclear talks begin. Bloggers expose forged Israeli passport used by Iran to execute a “Mossad agent.”

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Israel and the Palestinians

• Via Aaron Lerner, EU foreign policy chief Elizabeth Ashton says (pdf) that stone-throwing is legitimate non-violent protest.

“The High Representative is very concerned by the conviction of Bassem Tamimi in an Israeli military court on 20 May 2012 on charges of taking part in illegal demonstrations and of soliciting protesters to throw stones. 

The EU considers Bassem Tamimi to be a ‘human rights defender’ committed to non-violent protest against the expansion of an Israeli settlement on lands belonging to his West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. The EU attended all court hearings in his case and is concerned at the use of evidence based on the testimony of a minor who was interrogated in violation of his rights.

The EU believes that everyone should be able to exercise their legitimate right to protest in a non-violent manner.”

Of course, stone-throwing in London is a different story . . .

• Elliott Abrams: Palestinian unity talks are a sham designed to give Fatah and Hamas enough breathing space to continue pressing their real goal: ousting Salam Fayyad:

The goal of this new effort is supposedly elections, which are long overdue. But neither Fatah nor Hamas wants elections any more than they want real national unity; they just want to appear to support that goal, which is popular among Palestinians, and they want Fayyad out. Logically, then, they may announce an agreement, though it will be a very costly one: many donors, Western and Arab, will hold back on delivering funds once Fayyad is gone. But what they will not do is hold parliamentary or presidential elections, which neither Hamas nor Fatah leaders think are in their interest right now.

• NY Times bureau chief Jodi Rudoren spent yesterday tweeting her helicopter ride around the country with The Israel Project. Nice tweets too:

• Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby (paywall) weighs in on Israel’s image problems. Responding to Ambassador Michael Oren’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Jacoby writes:

Israel has gone on making concession after concession to those who seek its destruction,clinging against all logic to the fantasy of a “two-state solution.” Once, it was agreed byIsraeli governments left and right that a Palestinian state would be intolerable; thatthere could be no negotiating with the PLO; that diluting Jewish sovereignty overJerusalem was heresy.

Yet in its desperate quest for peace, Israel has backed away from each of those red lines. With each retreat, it lost respect. All the while it reinforced a false and terrible message: Peace would be possible if only Israel were willing to give up more. The absence of peace, therefore, must be Israel’s fault. The 19-year disaster of the peace process —that is what happened to Israel’s reputation. How can the Jewish state get its goodname back? Step one is to jettison the policy that caused it such harm.

• I see the JTA picked up on the UK Press Complaints Commission outlandish ruling that Tel Aviv can be called Israel’s capital.

• AP‘s Mohammed Daraghmeh reports that pro-Hamas students are holed up in Bir Zeit University, afraid they’ll be arrested if they leave the campus.

• In a Gaza dispatch, NY Times bureau chief Jodi Rudoren finds Hamas teaching Hebrew in a new curriculum called “Know Your Enemy.” The story sparked an amusing Twitter exchange between Rudoren and blogger Richard Silverstein (via IsraellyCool).

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Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Did the IAEA reach a real deal or a raw deal with Iran? Would the IDF strike Iran the day after US elections? Will Israelis be satisified with an Olympic spokesman’s explanation against a proposed minute of silence?

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Iranian Atomic Urgency

• The IAEA says it has reached an agreement with Iran on sending inspectors back to Iran. But AP notes that IAEA chief Yukiya Amano didn’t “seal a deal.” What’s really at stake? 

By compromising on the IAEA probe, Iranian negotiators in Baghdad could argue that the onus was now on the other side to show some flexibility and temper its demands. Although Amano’s trip and the talks in Baghdad are formally separate, Iran hopes progress with the IAEA can boost its chances Wednesday in pressing the U.S. and Europe to roll back sanctions that have hit Iran’s critical oil exports and blacklisted the country from international banking networks. 

It was unclear, though, how far the results achieved by Amano would serve that purpose, with his trip failing to seal a deal, despite his upbeat comments. 

• Worth reading: I liked how Geneive Abdo summed up Israel’s view of the nuclear diplomacy in this CNN commentary. Judging from her conclusion, you should mark your calendars for Wednesday, Nov. 7 — the day after US elections — for a possible Israeli strike on Iran:

The Israeli clock has already run out. Whatever patience Israel is demonstrating is merely to respect President Obama’s wish to get through the November election without an incident.

But it is likely that after November, there will no longer be a pretense of optimism from any side.

Israel and the Palestinians

• Columnist Frida Ghitis says Israel’s national unity coalition “creates a world of tantalizing opportunities” for peace with the Palestinians.

I hope Netanyahu will offer an olive branch, a way for Abbas to return to talks without seeming to capitulate.

Given that his stance has achieved nothing and Netanyahu is essentially assured of staying in office until at least late 2013, Abbas may want to reconsider, especially since elections in the U.S. promise even more of the same, or worse, for Palestinians. Either Obama wins, in which case he will try to pressure an even stronger Netanyahu, or Obama will lose and a Republican president will be much less helpful to Palestinians.

In the meantime, any hopes Abbas had the Arab uprisings would prove a huge help to Palestinians have not materialized.

• Palestinians scoff at Fatah-Hamas reconciliation.

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Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

60 Minutes returns to Israel. PA press freedom takes a strange turn. Any truth to rumors of an Israeli military presence in Cyprus?

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Israel and the Palestinians

• Bob Simon of 60 Minutes returns to Israel to profile Tel Aviv (video or transcript). Is this an attempt to atone Simon’s recent Unholy Attack On Israel? This time around, Simon touches on the city’s cosmopolitan reputation, party scene, gay tolerance, high-tech start-ups, and, of course, “the Tel Aviv bubble.”

• Now that products from the West Bank face a South African labeling law and a similar initiative is gaining traction in Denmark, Palestinians are testing the waters for a similar effort in Canada. The Co-op, one of Britain’s largest food chains, announced its own boycott of settlement products.

Avi Boaz

• The Irish Times catches up with Jihad Jaara, a fugitive from the Church of the Nativity siege. Jaara arrived in Ireland ten years ago this week as part of the internationally brokered exile which ended the standoff. I’m glad to see the Times didn’t overlook this big skeleton in Jaara’s closet:

Jaara’s case is further complicated by the fact US investigators allege he is implicated in the murder of Avi Boaz, a septuagenarian US-born émigré to Israel who was killed near Bethlehem in January 2002. A former Newsweek journalist who wrote a book about the Church of the Nativity siege alleges Jaara told him in an interview that he had been involved. Jaara has since denied this.

The former Newsweek journalist is Josh Hammer, who elaborated on the Jaara file in the NY Times Magazine a few years ago. 

• To strengthen Palestinian press freedom, “special judges” will be appointed in cases dealing with journalists. I have a better idea for strengthening press freedom in the PA. Stop arresting journalists, bloggers and Facebook activists. More on this at Maan News. Meanwhile, the PA released blogger Jamal Abu Rihan after 36 days. According to the Jerusalem Post:

He was detained on instructions from the PA attorney-general, Ahmed al-Mughni, after creating a Facebook group called “The people want to end corruption.” . . .

“Most of the questions centered around my activity with the Facebook group,” Abu Rihan told the London-based  Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper.

“This confirms that I was arrested only because of my being a blogger.”

• Hamas’s conundrum: How do you block an Israeli-made film about the assassination of Mahmoud Mabhouh without going through the Israeli justice system you don’t recognize? This from AP:

The movie, which features Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli as a temptress working for the hit team, is a “Zionist conspiracy” to defame al-Mabhouh, said a cousin, Ahmed, who lives in Gaza. Details of the suit, including where to file it, are still being worked out, he said.

• AP: “Palestinian rivals set timetable for unity deal.” Yogi Berra: “It’s like deja-vu, all over again.” ‘Nuff said.

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Following CBS 60 Minutes’ vicious assault on Israel for its alleged mistreatment of Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories, I can’t say I’m relishing tonight’s program, which looks at Tel Aviv and is described as:

Beneath the beauty and exuberance of Israel’s largest city lies the cold truth no resident forgets: that the city has been attacked before and could come under attack again in the increasingly volatile Middle East.

Let’s put aside the ignorance that claims Tel Aviv to be “Israel’s largest city” (Jerusalem is the largest, both in geographic size and population). Maybe I’m being overly sensitive when I see the photo that 60 Minutes has posted on its Facebook page.

With three IDF helicopters flying overhead, is 60 Minutes so very subtly trying to promote the image of Israel as a militaristic society impossible to escape from even on a Tel Aviv beach?

In fact, those helicopters flying in formation aren’t a regular occurrence at all. It happens but once a year on Independence Day when the Israeli Air Force performs an impressive flypast over the length of the Israeli coastline and major cities as a treat for those watching from below.

Here’s hoping that Bob Simon really “travels from the bars to the beaches of Tel Aviv to examine how Tel Avivians live their lives.” Will Bob redeem himself or will we be critiquing 60 Minutes for a second time in quick succession?

Everything you need to know about the weekend media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Is there a relationship between the Holocaust and culturally boycotting Israel? Is London ready for a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Olympic visit? Which veteran columnist is under suspicion for plagiarizing Electronic Intifada — among others?

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Israel and the Palestinians

• Thumbs up to the Irish Times for publishing a remarkably frank op-ed about culturally boycotting Israel.

If there’s one thing western intellectuals can’t afford to be crude about, it’s the relationship of their own cultures to Jewish history. The Holocaust doesn’t excuse Israeli abuses of human rights, but it does form the context in which collective acts like boycotts have to be set. There is a nasty history of using boycotts to isolate Jewish communities in Europe: Limerick in 1904 is a relatively minor example. In the extreme case of Nazi Germany, boycotting was a prelude to attempted elimination.

This history changes the dynamic of a boycott. In the case of South Africa, the idea was that boycotts might induce shame in white South Africans, causing them to question their support for the system. In the case of Israel, Jewish history means that this effect is impossible.

Boycotts will always be interpreted as an expression of anti-Semitism and as a prelude to worse attacks.

Critics of Israel will dismiss this as special pleading and point to the cynical way the Israeli government uses accusations of anti-Semitism to deflect legitimate questions about its policies and behaviour. But the problem is actually a double one. There are false accusations of anti-Semitism – the vast majority of those supporting a cultural boycott are not motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice. But there is also a minority strain of false concern for the Palestinians, whose sufferings are used as cover for anti-Semites.

Because anti-Semitism still exists, there is a duty to be especially careful about a boycott that suggests that Israelis as such are not fit people for cultural exchange.

• Elder of Ziyon debunks AFP’s latest Pallywood special.

• The PA’s snit with Mohammed Rashid’s getting juicier. Rashid — Yasser Arafat’s longtime moneyman — says the PA gave millions of dollars to Israeli-Arab parties during general elections. Meanwhile, Interpol denied the PA’s request to arrest Rashid. Why not? asks Maan News:

The attorney-general added that he had asked Interpol to intervene but it would not help because Palestine is not a recognized state.

• South Africa has decided that products made in Israeli settlements may not be labeled as “Made in Israel.” According to the Jerusalem Post:

In a statement published last week in the governmental gazette, Trade Minister Rob Davies declared that consumers in South Africa should not be misled into believing that products originating from the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” originate from Israel.

Denmark may push a similar labeling law. West Bank factory owners told YNet:

Ironically, those who would get harmed the most by the move are some 15,000 Palestinian workers who are employed in these factories and depend on ththe em to make a living.

• Ben Lynfield (Christian Science Monitor) interviews the lawyer pushing the legal case against Migron and Ulpana.

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Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Is Big Media underplaying the Hamas-Fatah split? What dirty laundry is Yasser Arafat’s wanted moneyman hinting he’ll expose? Doesn’t Bashar Assad realize he lost the info war months ago?

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Israel and the Palestinians

• The Hamas-Fatah split is more profound than people believe, and Jonathan Spyer says this is a story inadequately covered by Big Media.

The nature of the regime created by Hamas in Gaza, and its strength and durability, has received insufficient attention in the West. This may have a political root: Western governments feel the need to keep alive the fiction of the long-dead peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. One of the necessary components of this is pretending that the historic split between nationalists and Islamists among the Palestinians has not really happened, or that it is a temporary glitch that will soon be reconciled. This fiction is necessary for peace process believers, because it enables them to continue to treat the West Bank Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas as the sole representative of the Palestinians.

But fiction it is. An Islamist one-party quasi-state has been built in Gaza over the last half-decade.

• The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus thinks the US is putting Israeli budgetary concerns ahead of its own in the area of defense spending. Pincus targets a $680 million deal to help Israel pay for and procure additional Iron Dome batteries. Last I saw of this, Congress was indeed playing hardball for some rights to the defense system.

• Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new PA cabinet. Salam Fayyad remains Prime Minister, but he had to relinquish the finance portfolio. The BBC writes:

The new finance minister is Nabil Kassis, a former university president and independent. He will have to cope with a projected $500m gap in the Palestinian Authority’s $1.3bn budget, most of which comes from the European Union, United States and Arab countries.

• Open Zion‘s Emily Hauser thinks she has proof that Gaza is still occupied by Israel. But Hamas honcho Mohammed Zahar bursts Hauser’s balloon. He’s going to travel unhindered to Egypt in order to vote in the upcoming elections.

• Writing in Foreign Policy, Aaron David Miller disagrees with Ambassador Michael Oren’s recent Wall Street Journal commentary on Israel’s image.

But I just don’t buy the argument that Israel’s image has eroded principally because of a dedicated campaign to delegitimize it.

Three other factors drive Israel’s very bad PR: the realities of nation-building, the image of the asymmetry of power, and Israel’s own actions, which, like those of so many other countries, value short-term tactics over long-term strategy . . .

The notion that Israel’s unfavorable image is a result of some evil cabal that plots daily against it infantilizes the Israelis and takes them out of history as real-world actors who sometimes do well in pursuit of their interests and at other times screw up badly. Israel is a remarkable state that has sought to preserve its moral and ethical soul in a cruel and unforgiving world. But it is still only a nation of mortals trying to survive in that world.

• AP‘s Karin Laub expands on the the PA’s corruption case against Yasser Arafat’s financial advisor, Mohammed Rashid. The story’s getting juicy:

In comments posted Tuesday on the website Inlightpress, Rashid said he would not respond to the allegations now, but warned that Abbas “made a huge mistake and must suffer the consequences.” He did not elaborate. The website, which is believed to be linked to Rashid, announced in a separate section that it would soon run a series of articles by Rashid about the circumstances of Abbas’ rise to power.

• Meet Boualem Sansal, an Algerian novelist shrugging off critics to attend the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem. He shared his jaundiced view of the Mideast conflict and Arab Spring with the Jerusalem Post:

On Wednesday, Sansal, a staunch secularist, reiterated his warnings about the rising tide of Islamism in the wake of the Arab revolts.

“I feel we’re in the 1930s in the last century – then, no one responded properly. Today Islamism is becoming fascism,” he said. “If there’s no democracy, people will look for religion to be their parliament, their government and so forth. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

“Let’s not delude ourselves that this will take 10 or 15 years – this will be very difficult work,” he added.

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Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

WikiLeaks may be responsible for yesterday’s hanging of a “Mossad agent” in Iran. Big court judgment for American victims of Palestinian terror. And did Iran’s foreign minister act as a front for illicit nuclear procurement activity?

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Israel and the Palestinians

• The family of Daniel Wultz won a $323 million judgment against Iran and Syria for their roles in a 2006 terror attack. The 16-year-old Jewish American resident was among 11 people killed in a Tel Aviv restaurant by an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber. I’m very pleased with this AP headline for two reasons.

1. The  judgement won’t bring back Daniel Wultz, but I’m relieved to see justice done. Even as doctors fought for the comatose teen’s life, Islamic Jihad brazenly called Wultz “the ideal target.”
2. An AP headline uses the word terror as its own word.

See also Miami Herald and Times of Israel coverage.

• Naqba Day came and went with relatively few clashes. A Times of Israel analysis attributes this to IDF readiness, a “weary and fractured Palestinian public.” The end of the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike also helped as “the minor victory given to the Palestinians on the eve of Nakba day robbed many of the will to protest.”

• Over at the Times of London (paywall), Amir Taheri suggests Israel’s new coalition drop peace talks with the Palestinians and rebuild itself.

I suggested that the two-state formula had started as an empty slogan and was now a soiled cliché. There was no evidence that the Palestinian elite valued the creation of a state more than the “cause” of destroying Israel — and experience shows that every “peace initiative” has hardened positions on both sides, making an accord that much more elusive. Paradoxically, there may be a stronger chance of a lasting settlement if the coalition eschews wasting time and political capital on talks. Instead it should concentrate on rebuilding Israel and rethinking its links with the rest of the region . . .

The image of Israel as weak encourages those who favour revenge over coexistence, making the conversion of the Palestinian elite to a peace strategy more problematic. Israel also has to work out where it fits into the geopolitical landscape of a Middle East being reshaped by the Arab Spring.

• Two months after HonestReporting exposed the UN connection to Khulood Badawi’s false photo tweet, the UN’s investigation grinds on. The Jerusalem Post reports that the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Catherine Bragg, arrived in Jerusalem “to examine both OCHA’s work here and the fallout from the tweeting incident.”

Badawi was suspended from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in response to the Israeli backlash. Last month, HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams delivered a petition to OCHA signed by 15,000 people demanding her dismissal.

• Irish novelist Gerard Donovan skewers the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which tried to bully him into cancelling an appearance at the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem. The Irish Times picks up on Donovan’s blistering open letter to the IPSC:

Mr Donovan described the campaign group as “idiots” as he had cancelled his planned visit to Jerusalem two months ago, but solely on health grounds . . .

He added: “If I had been well, I would have gone to Jerusalem. It is the job of the novelist to write things people don’t want to read and to go places where other people don’t want to go.

“Nobody tells me where I can or cannot read my work.”

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It’s been two months since HonestReporting exposed “false photo tweeter” Khulood Badawi and the case continues to drag on. We delivered 15,000 signatures demanding the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) fire Badawi. Having promised to investigate, is the UN finally moving slowly through the gears?

The Jerusalem Post reports:

A small group of people demonstrated in front of a UN office in Jerusalem Tuesday in support of a worker who used her Twitter account to send an incendiary message against Israel when rockets were falling on the South in March.

The gathering took place at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) during a visit here by a senior UN official, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Bragg.

Bragg came to examine both OCHA’s work here and the fallout from the tweeting incident. …

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor expressed outrage at Badawi’s conduct, and called for her dismissal in a letter at the time to the Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos.

The UN, however, also came under pressure from Arab and Palestinian circles not to fire the worker.

Bragg, who arrived in the country Sunday and left Tuesday, is Amos’s deputy. She did not meet with Foreign Ministry officials during her visit, and Jerusalem is still waiting to hear from OCHA about how it intends to deal with the affair.

They’re not the only ones still waiting.

Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Turkish journalist calls Israeli detention “five-star” compared to Syrian prison. France’s new president already goes soft on Iran. Palestinian hunger strike ends, but Naqba Day clashes begin.

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Israel and the Palestinians

• The hunger strike’s over. Haaretz assesses the winners and losers. The Atlantic Wire rounds up the rest of the coverage.

• Palestinians mark Naqba Day. The Jerusalem Post rounds up the clashes. And the Times of Israel talks to an IDF officer responsible for combat doctrine in “non-warfare activities” about dealing with violent and non-violent protest.

• Irish Times: Ireland may push for EU boycott of goods on products from Israeli settlements.

• Worth reading: Ambassador Michael Oren asks, What Happened to Israel’s Reputation? See his Wall Street Journal op-ed (click via Google News).

• In The Australian (click via Google News), the Palestinian ambassador to Australia claims “Israel ignores hunger for freedom.”

• Israel activist and blogger Richard Millett was assaulted at a Palestine Society meeting at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS). Here’s how you can respond.

Iranian Atomic Urgency

• Elliott Abrams worries that Francois Hollande is already going soft on Iran:

It is difficult to exaggerate how significant a softening of France’s hard line would be. France has been tougher than Russia and China of course, but has also stiffened the position of the “EU 3? by being tougher than Germany and the UK. More important, it has at many junctures been tougher than the United States, sharply asking the difficult questions, highlighting logical deficiencies in arguments, and slicing through wishful thinking. If France is now to abandon this stance and simply agree with the UK, Germany, and the United States, the negotiations with Iran are more likely than ever to produce an unsatisfactory result that will be labelled adequate by its proponents.

• Iran hanged “Mossad agent” it claimed was responsible for assassination of a nuclear scientist. More at Reuters.

Arab Spring Winter

• Turkish journalist Adem Ozkose tells AP that Israeli detention was “five-star” compared to the Syrian prison he was just released from after two months. Okose was aboard the Mavi Marmara as a journalist, detained by Israel for several days, and deported home. Syria also released cameraman Hamit Coskun.

• Aaron David Miller (Bloomberg News) gives a thumbs-down to creating Syrian safe zones. Here’s why:

To have even a chance of working, the right conditions would have to be present. Those would include full Turkish buy- in and an international mandate legitimizing intervention, preferably a resolution of the UN Security Council. Most important would be a sustained military commitment to protect the zones and the corridors leading to them. This would require air patrols and thus the suppression of Syrian air defenses. It would also mean carrying out offensive air strikes against the regime’s forces, if the Syrians respond militarily, and ultimately securing Syria’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons to prevent their use against coalition troops.

Even if all that could be achieved (and it probably couldn’t), safe zones are real headaches. Protecting these areas from the air might not be possible and would thus require boots on the ground. The farther coalition forces got from Turkey’s border, the harder and messier this would be. Once in, there would be no choice but to prevail.

• Shlomo Avineri (Japan Times) and Harry Sterling (Edmonton Journal) both point out that the Arab Spring won’t result in real democracy until Arab society changes its nature.

• Time: Is Al-Qaida intervening in Syria?

Rest O’ the Roundup

• Jeremy Cooper (The Australian, via Google News) says Australia’s financial system could learn a lot from Israel.

For a country that was only invited to join the OECD in 2010, Israel can be proud of its willingness to confront shortcomings in its financial system and deal with them in a characteristically purposeful and robust manner.

European Bee Eater: The Mossad's latest tool

• Your daily dose of idiocy: Turkey suspects bird of being Israeli spy.

The bird had a ring reading “Israel” on one of its legs . . .

The bird-beak in question reportedly sported “unusually large nostrils,” which – combined with the identification ring – raised suspicions that the bird was “implanted with a surveillance device” and that it arrived in Turkey as part of an espionage mission.

(Image of bird via Flickr/ferran pestana)

For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.

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We’ve seen Mossad Sharks in Egypt and Zionist Vultures in Saudi Arabia. Now, Turkey is claiming it caught a bird with “unusually large nostrils” spying for Israel.

According to Yediot Aharonot, which broke the latest installment of Israel’s conquest of the animal kingdom for intelligence purposes, a farmer spotted a dead bird with a ring bearing the word “Israel” on it’s leg. While that would be suspicious enough, it wasn’t what drew the attention of Turkish authorities. Apparently, it was the fact that the bird had a particularly big nose.

The bird-beak in question reportedly sported “unusually large nostrils,” which – combined with the identification ring – raised suspicions that the bird was “implanted with a surveillance device” and that it arrived in Turkey as part of an espionage mission.

The bird’s remains were originally handed over to the Turkish Agriculture Ministry, which then turned in over to Ankara’s security services.

When it comes to anti-Semitic tropes, Turkey has hit it, well…right on the nose. Hopefully the Mossad will stop using animals to do its dirty work – or at least the ones with classic Jewish features.