Is White House Preparing New Peace Push?

Today’s Top Stories

1. The White House is preparing to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks before the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, according to the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News). Options reportedly being weighed include offering a blueprint for talks, US support for a UN Security Council resolution, a speech or joint statement with other Quartet leaders.

U.S. officials said the president wants to put the issue on a more promising trajectory before his successor takes office in January. The recent increase in tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians has significantly dimmed the prospects of a deal and raised concerns within the White House that the situation could further deteriorate without any platform for negotiations . . .

 

Mr. Obama’s final appearance at the annual U.N. General Assembly this fall could provide a platform for outlining a new approach.

2. Due credit to the New York Times for taking a closer look at Palestinian governance and society. A strike by Palestinian teachers is taking on a life of its own while West Bank schools have been closed for a month.

Ehab Al-Jariri, a Palestinian radio commentator, said the leadership was afraid that compromising with teachers could spark other labor strikes. The government’s tactic, he said, was to drag out the strike in the hope that teachers would be pressured by the public to go back to work, but that it had inadvertently created what the government most feared: structured opposition.

And according to Khaled Abu Toameh, the PA’s Western donors are asking uncomfortable questions about how their money is being spent.

What is really happening is that the teachers are blowing the whistle on PA corruption. They have accused the PA Ministry of Education of wasting donors’ funds and deceiving them by inflating the number of teachers. They claim that the list of employees (about 56,000) ostensibly hired by the ministry contains many fictitious names. These include teachers and administrative workers of the ministry.

 

The teachers also accuse the PA of lying to the donors about their salaries. The information provided by the PA to donors claimed that the PA pays higher salaries to the teachers than the teachers actually receive.

 

In other words, the striking teachers are exposing the PA as playing Western donors for suckers.

3. German prosecutors are weighing whether to proceed with a criminal complaint filed against Mark Zuckerberg over anti-Semitic posts on Facebook. The International Business Times reports:

It is illegal to incite hatred and to circulate or display Nazi symbols in Germany and if Zuckerberg is found guilty on those charges, he could face a fine of up to $163m (€150m) . . .

 

Jun has compiled a list of more than 300 Facebook pages and posts that contain swastikas and other Nazi-related images as well as calls for violence against the Middle Eastern and North African immigrants who have flooded Germany over the past year.

 

Facebook has removed some of them from the internet, but many others are still up.

4. AFP Celebrates Murder: On International Women’s Day: Puff piece celebrates the wives of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists.

Israel and the Palestinians

• As this roundup went to press, reports broke of a Palestinian shooting attack in Jerusalem and stabbing attack in Petah Tikva. This morning, a Palestinian was shot and killed trying to stab Israeli security personnel in Jerusalem’s Old City. Also this morning, a Palestinian woman armed with a knife was arrested at the Qalandiya checkpoint.

And on Monday, a tourist in Jerusalem was lightly hurt in Palestinian rock-throwing attack.

• The families of 33 Israelis killed in five months of Palestinian terror attacks are still picking up the pieces after burying their loved ones. Several shared their stories with YNet.

• The Organization of Islamic Cooperation got together in Indonesia to show support for Palestine. Mahmoud Abbas, who is pushing war crimes charges against Israel in the International Criminal Court, hobnobbed with Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who himself is wanted by the ICC for war crimes in Darfur. Indonesia isn’t a signatory to the ICC, which makes it safe for Abbas and Bashir to show what they really think of the Hague. Associated Press coverage.

#IsraeltheRegion #MahmoudAbbas #TempleMount #AlAqsaMosque #Indonesia Abbas says Israel trying to ‘Judaize’ Temple… https://t.co/GJwRWDWvFC

— Israel News (@IsraelNewsNow) March 7, 2016

• 19,000 Palestinians fleeing the Mideast applied for asylum in the EU last year.

• Wondering why journalist Kate Shuttleworth deleted this tweet. It perfectly matches the headline of the article she was linking to. Was it because she didn’t know IOF stands for “Israeli Occupation Forces?” Was it because Fadwa Abu Tair was actually shot while trying to stab Border Policemen?

Or was it because the Twitterverse response was making her look like an idiot?

• Israel slammed a UN report blaming it for domestic abuse of Palestinian women. It’s the old Israel made me beat my wife canard . . .

• Jodi Rudoren, the former Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times, took questions from readers about her experiences covering Israel and the Palestinians. The very first question in the podcast is about media bias. Rudoren’s still dismissive of media watchdogs because she claims the criticism isn’t based on journalistic values. You can raise your own level of news literacy by getting a copy of Red Lines: The Eight Categories of Media Bias.

• CNN‘s Oren Lieberman takes a closer look at what Israeli researchers are doing in the field of medical marijuana.

Around the World

• According to Arab media reports, the UN’s Special Tribunal for Lebanon is going to formally accuse the Hezbollah organization for the February, 2000 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Five of its operatives are currently being tried in absentia.

According to Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, the main goal of the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal currently is to find out who are the people who instructed the group which carried out the car bomb attack. Serving as Hezbollah’s Secretary General at the time of Hariri’s assassination, Hassan Nasrallah might be a target for investigations in this direction.

• Displaying its deterrent capabilities, Iran test-fired ballistic missiles during a military exercise.

• Danish police arrested a 16-year-old girl who planned bombing attacks on two schools — one of which was Jewish. Reuters writes:

A police press release said the girl’s 24-year-old friend, who local media have said was a former fighter in Syria, had also been charged with complicity in preparing the bombs.

• Boy, 13, attacked in Paris on the way to synagogue

• Vienna cancelled BDS events in a municipal-funded cultural center.

• The mayor of Madrid joins movement against anti-Semitism.

Commentary/Analysis

• I liked how New York Times columnist Roger Cohen translated the UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism problem for US audiences in explaining The Anti-Semitism of the Left.

What is striking about the anti-Zionism derangement syndrome that spills over into anti-Semitism is its ahistorical nature. It denies the long Jewish presence in, and bond with, the Holy Land. It disregards the fundamental link between murderous European anti-Semitism and the decision of surviving Jews to embrace Zionism in the conviction that only a Jewish homeland could keep them safe. It dismisses the legal basis for the modern Jewish state in United Nations Resolution 181 of 1947. This was not “colonialism” but the post-Holocaust will of the world: Arab armies went to war against it and lost.

• In recent days, cabinet minister Ze’ev Elkin has been at the center of a public debate about the possibility of the Palestinian Authority collapsing and what plans Israel should make for it. Columnist Nahum Barnea sat down with Elkin to discuss the issue.

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

– Seth Frantzman: The endlessly collapsing Palestinian Authority
– Alex Davis: British Jews stick together at university, but is anti-Israel sentiment to blame?
– Dennis Ross: Why the nuclear deal hasn’t softened Iran’s hard-line policies
– Shimon Fogel: Truth vs. myth in the BDS movement
– Tariq Alhomayed: The UN envoy and the “foreigners” in Syria

Featured image: CC BY Jon S; Zuckerberg CC BY-NC Wired Photostream;

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