Today’s Top Stories
1. Benyamin Netanyahu and Likud won yesterday’s elections. See below for what happened, what’s next, and what it means.
2. Oops, he did it again. John Kerry plugged Ayatollah Khamenei’s non-existent nuclear fatwa.
3. Brazilian media reports are backing Alberto Nisman’s claims of an Argentina-Iran conspiracy, with allegations are bigger than we thought. The JTA writes:
Iran financed the 2007 campaign of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in exchange for impunity for Iranians in the AMIA bombing, a Brazilian magazine reported.
According to Veja on Saturday, the deal brokered by Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, also provided the Iranians with nuclear know-how.
4. HR Radio: When Do the Palestinians Get to Vote?: Yarden Frankl discusses the lack of democratic rights for Palestinians, a Hollywood celebrity takes to the LA Times to fight anti-Semitism, and your chance to ask the terrorist group Hamas any question as they try to present a new, less bloody image to the world. Click below to hear the interview on Voice of Israel.
Israeli Elections
• Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was re-elected, as Likud beat Yitzhak Herzog and the Zionist Union by an unexpectedly wide six-seat margin. Judging from the breakdown of seats, the most likely scenario is for Netanyahu to form a center-right coalition. But President Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin may prod party leaders for a national unity government.
Here’s the breakdown of the next Knesset’s 120 seats.
• Meet the new Knesset — if diversity’s your thing, there’s a record number of female and Arab MKs.
• You’re going to hear a lot about Moshe Kahlon, of the Kulanu Party. AP profiles the new kingmaker of Libyan descent who many are pegging for Minister of Finance. Globes is already asking if the banks are right to be afraid of him.
• The big story of this election is the emergence of the Arab vote. Three factions united, sparking higher Arab turnout. Now the Joint Arab List is the Knesset’s third largest party. The New York Times was in Nazareth as Arabs celebrated the results.
• Worth reading: Alberto Nardelli explains why last night’s Israeli exit polls were wrong, while Reuters quoted red-faced pollsters on their flawed methods.
• The Palestinians are going to press on at the ICC because Netanyahu won, says Saeb Erekat.
• World leaders like David Cameron, Stephen Harper, and Narendra Modi offered congratulations to Netanyahu. But it’s raising eyebrows that it was left to a White House aide to congratulate “the Israeli people” without mentioning Netanyahu’s name.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The cash-strapped PA adopted an emergency budget.
• Academic boycotters strengthened their hold on the American Studies Association, as William Jacobson explains in detail.
One ASA subplot here is its president-elect, Professor Robert Warrior. He’s a Native American who peddles the theory of Israeli “redwashing,” which claims that Israel uses Native Americans to promote Jewish indigenous ties to Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. (“Redwashing” is to Israel and Native Americans as “pinkwashing” is to Israel and the gay/lesbian community.) Fortunately, Native Americans like Ryan Bellerose are speaking out against Palestinians hijacking the First Nations.
• French experts conclude that Yasser Arafat did not die of poisoning.
• Pro-Palestinian activists in the UK launched a food fight with the Waitrose Supermarket chain. The chain publishes a monthly magazine, and its February edition included a glossy 32-page supplement called “Taste of Israel,” complete with a recipes, a restaurant guide, a glossary of Israeli dishes and ingredients, and more. The story only now caught the attention of The Independent and Daily Mail.
Mideast Matters
• According to media reports, Israel’s now providing medical treatment to injured Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda fighters.
• US intel report scrapped Iran from list of terror threats. Is it a deliberate whitewash?
The unclassified version of the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Communities, dated February 26, 2015 (PDF), noted Iran’s efforts to combat Sunni extremists, including those of the ultra-radical Islamic State group, who were perceived to constitute the preeminent terrorist threat to American interests worldwide.
• A UN official blasted the human rights situation in Iran, especially the fact that the number of executions has risen since Hassan Rouhani became Prime Minister. New York Times coverage of that. Meanwhile, Newsweek reports that Iran currently averages two executions each day.
• Iran ordered Hezbollah to send hundreds of fighters to Iraq to liberate the city of Mosul. According to Arab reports, some 800 men will be deployed over the next two or three weeks. More at Ya Libnan.
• Iraqi Kurds say ISIS is using chlorine gas.
• Amman’s concerned about the rising influence of Iran and its proxies along the Syria-Jordan border, according to Algemeiner.
• How does the Rouhani Meter fact-check Iran’s president from 6,000 miles away? The Duke Reporters Lab explains:
Fact-checkers aren’t welcome in Iran, so Farhad Souzanchi and the Rouhani Meter team work from Canada.
• Maan News: Egypt demolished another thousand homes to expand its Sinai-Gaza buffer zone — and there are another 200 slated for razing.
Commentary/Analysis
• You can feel the palpable grumpiness at the New York Times as Tom Friedman, Roger Cohen, Isabel Kershner, and a staff-ed weigh in. Whether you view some of Netanyahu’s comments as demagoguery or not, I think the heavy attention given by the Times was disproportionate.
• Memo to Yara Hawari: The “disenfranchised” Palestinians — all 4.5 million of ’em — are supposed to vote in Palestinian elections. I know PA elections are years overdue, but best is to take it up with Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh.
• So what do the election results mean, and what happens next?
– Anshel Pfeffer: How did Netanyahu score such a decisive election victory?
– Allison Kaplan Sommer: The 6 big surprises of the 2015 election
– Herb Keinon: Israeli nods to Bibi, who now needs to nod to Obama
– Jonathan Tobin: Why did Bibi win? Realism, not racism
– Stephen Pollard: Clear victory shows Bibi’s so-called ‘scaremongering’ campaign was right all along
– Jonathan Alter: Bibi’s ugly win will harm Israel
– Los Angeles Times staff-ed: Netanyahu’s cynical campaign
• What could the US learn from the Israeli electoral system? The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times compare the two with some interesting observations.
• Richard Kemp addresses the boycotters who disrupted his appearance at the U. of Sydney. And Aussie activist Glenn Falkenstein says Professor Jake Lynch’s anti-Semitic behavior went too far.
• For more commentary analysis, see Jackson Diehl (Iranian talk are about the future of the Mideast), Amir Taheri (We’re letting Iran and ISIS carve up Iraq), and Aaron David Miller (The risks of negotiating with Assad).
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA xeeliz with modifications by HonestReporting; Native American CC BY flickr/Fort Rucker;
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