Today’s Top Stories
1. Damaging photos from 2014 surfaced showing Jeremy Corbyn at a tribute event for Palestinian “martyrs” — including the plotters responsible for the massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes during the 1972 Munich games. The Daily Mail reports that Corbyn even laid a wreath.
The massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics was among the first news stories I followed closely at the age of 6. It had a huge impact on me. How many layers of justification does it take to honor the killers as martyrs? https://t.co/gMT2Wc6Ljp
— Howard Lovy (@Howard_Lovy) August 11, 2018
2. The rocket fire came to an end, but it was business as usual for thousands of Palestinians who resumed the “March of Return” clashes along the Gaza border. Palestinians threw firebombs and rocks at soldiers and incendiary balloons were let loose. Haaretz coverage.
Meanwhile, an unusually large incendiary kite from Gaza landed on power lines near Kibbutz Sufa on Friday. Workers from the Israeli Electric Corporation removed the burning device from the four meter (13 foot) kite before the fire could spread. More at the Times of Israel.
3. National Public Radio: The Trump administration may soon cut suspended aid to Palestinians. More on the story at Foreign Policy, which says the the amount to be withheld is “up to $200 million.”
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
4. HR Visits the Gaza Border: HonestReporting visited kibbutzim near the Gaza border. By reminding ourselves of who and what Israel is defending, the truth comes into proper focus.
5. Casualty Counts as a Moral Barometer and Virtue Signalling: In a 558-word column, virtue signaling at the expense of Israel is, unfortunately, a lot easier than conflict resolution.
6. A Night of Rockets and Headline Fails: While Hamas fired rockets and Israel responded, you won’t believe the headlines some editors came up with.
7. If more Palestinians die than Israelis, does that mean that Israel is to blame? HR’s Daniel Pomerantz and former Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer debate on i24News.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Hamas arrested a Salafi cell it said was responsible for firing a Grad rocket which landed in Beersheva on Thursday.
• Hamas tried to hack Israelis with a fake rocket warning app.
• YNet takes a closer look at UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov, the man trying to save Gaza.
• Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers traced the false photo of a Gaza toddler killed during an Israeli airstrike to the Instagram account of Dr. Basem Naim. He’s the head of the Council on International Relations in Gaza, as well as the Strip’s former Health Minister.
https://twitter.com/kishkushkay/status/1027624210309505024
• It’s been 17 years since a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 15 people inside a busy Jerusalem restaurant. Palestinian Media Watch noted the August 9 anniversary of the attack known as the Sbarro’s bombing with a look at the PA terror stipends paid out to the people involved in the attack. Here’s a by the numbers look:
– $294,332: total money paid by the PA to the three Palestinians involved in the attack and their families
– $50,124: Money paid to the family of the suicide bomber, Izz al-Din Al-Masri
– $52,681: Money paid to Ahlam Tamimi, who planned the attack and brought Al-Masri to Jerusalem
– $52,681: Money paid to Abdallah Barghouti, who built Al-Masri’s bomb vest
– 15: people killed in the bombing
– 7: children among the dead
– 130: people injured
• Worth reading: Journalist Matti Friedman profiles Ramadan Dabash, who is vying to become the first Palestinian to take a seat on the Jerusalem city council. Municipal elections are on October 30.
Over the past five years or so, watching from west Jerusalem, it’s been clear that remarkable changes are afoot in the city’s human landscape. Not long ago, it was unheard-of to see Palestinian salespeople in Israeli stores. Now it’s commonplace. Palestinian enrollment at Hebrew University is up dramatically, as are requests for Israeli citizenship. The number of East Jerusalem wage earners employed in West Jerusalem is now estimated at close to 50 percent. The trend is driven not by good will but by economic interests: by demand for labor in Jewish Jerusalem, and by a lack of better options for Palestinians. . .
Following all of this makes you more aware of the peculiarities and paradoxes on which the city rests. One, for example, is that the movement on the Israeli side is coming not from the conciliatory left but from the nationalist right. The left traditionally hoped that one day East Jerusalem would be transferred to Palestinian rule and wouldn’t be Israel’s problem — hardly an incentive to invest. The right, on the other hand, believes the whole city must remain under Israeli control, and thus has an interest in making a united city more viable.
• Over in South America (part 1): The new government of Colombia is reviewing former President Juan Manuel Santos’ recognition of Palestine shortly before he stepped down from office. Days before President Ivan Duque was sworn in, Santos sent a letter to the Palestinian representative in Colombia recognizing “Palestine” as “free, independent and sovereign state,” Reuters reports. Duque previously said that he is open to moving Colombia’s embassy to Jerusalem.
• Over in South America (part 2): Brazilian presidential front-runner vows to move embassy to Jerusalem and close the Palestinian embassy in Brasilia.
“Is Palestine a country? Palestine is not a country, so there should be no embassy here,” Jair Bolsonaro, a lawmaker from the Social Liberal Party, said Tuesday when the National Congress reopened after a three-week recess. “You do not negotiate with terrorists.” . . .
The South American country recognized Palestine as an independent state in 2010 as part of former far-left President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s alignment with extremist governments such as Iran and Libya.
• Over in South America (part 3): Is South America turning pro-Israel?
• The Los Angeles Times and the Times of Israel take a closer look at Israel’s public relations battle.
• Ten months on, a Palestinian school built with Belgian aid is still named after terrorist who massacred 38 people. Dalal Mughrabi was the key figure in the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre.
Window Into Israel
• Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein made some waves for refusing to sign an Israeli Arab MK’s resignation letter which was written in Arabic. The Washington Post neglects to mention that Edelstein sent Wael Younis’ letter to the Knesset translation department and then signed the document.
• The State Comptroller is probing why a gas processing platform for Israel’s largest offshore gas field is only 10 km (about six miles) away the coast. The Times of Israel reports that critics citing safety and health concerns want it moved 125 km (78 miles) out to sea. The government says the closer location is easier to protect. And Noble Energy says the project as it is now is irreversible. Sigh.
Around the World
• Key allies of UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn are urging him to accept the IHRA definition in full or face what Politico calls “or face a potentially catastrophic rupture in the party.”
• A pair of Jeremy Corbyn videos also surfaced in recent days that aren’t going to help him make nice with angry Jewish community leaders. In 2013 video, Corbyn said Palestinians live “under occupation of the very sort that would be recognized by many people in Europe” during World War II, the Times of Israel reports.
A separate video from 2012 shows Corbyn applauding antisemitic poetry at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign meeting. The Campaign Against Antisemitism fills in the background.
EXCLUSIVE – In 2013 @JeremyCorbyn spoke at an event hosted by the Palestinian Return Centre in which he made a direct comparison between Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Nazi occupation of Europe during WW2. Watch until the end… pic.twitter.com/POMfsX5APq
— The Golem (@TheGolem_) August 10, 2018
• The Daily Telegraph reports that the Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, is also under fire for comments made in 2012 about Israel “genocide” against the Palestinians.
• Leaked Labour papers reveal scale of challenge to tackle antisemitism. Internal party documents seen by The Guardian indicate that there are more antisemitic incidents than the party can effectively investigate and discipline.
Around 70 cases are believed to be pending. However, the papers reveal only a minority were considered by the NEC because of time constraints. At least three of the most serious cases of antisemitism were referred to Labour’s highest disciplinary body for possible expulsion.
• The Norwegian daily paper Dagbladet, is refusing to remove an anti-Semitic Netanyahu cartoon
The image, from the poison pen of cartoonist Finn Griff, depicts the PM, whose body is shaped like a Nazi swastika, punching a Druze off a “whites only” bench. The cartoon online illustrates a commentary by columnist Jan-Erik Smilden. If you understand Norwegian, post your thoughts on Smilden in the comments section below. Ambassador Raphael Schutz is demanding an apology.
Today in @dagbladet, an example of the most repulsive imaginable #antisemitic imagery, with Israeli PM portrayed as a Nazi swastika punching off a Druze Israeli from a ‘whites only’ bench.
We demand dagbladet to remove this sickening image and apologize! pic.twitter.com/zy3OSuLJcu— Raphael Schutz ?? (@RafiSchutz) August 7, 2018
• A study found that antisemitic acts involving Israel are “far more likely” to create a hostile environment for Jewish students on US campuses. Antisemitism reflecting a more generic anti-Jewish prejudice less so. The Algemeiner picked up on a report by the Amcha Initiative, which documented 652 antisemitic incidents on more than 400 college campuses in 2017.
• US academic group decries BDS and also (!?) legal attempts to squelch it
• University of North Carolina revises textbook blaming victims of the Holocaust.
• Antisemitic crime is on the rise in Germany.
• Ottawa mosque’s charitable status revoked after audit finds ‘extremist’ speakers
• Iran taking back enriched uranium it sent out to Russia under nuke deal.
Commentary
• Gotta like Yaakov Kirschen‘s take on the recent Gaza flare up.
It won't be news until the Jews fight back. pic.twitter.com/HXt3deHHjN
— Yaakov Kirschen (@drybonescartoon) August 10, 2018
• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels on Israel and Hamas:
– Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror: The perception of weakness
– Judith Bergman: Gaza’s long war against Israel
– Mark Werner: Musings from a bomb shelter
– Abraham Cooper: The UN shares the blame for Hamas’ bloodshed
– Marc Schulman: Israel must give Gaza a ray of hope
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Hamas is jealous of Hezbollah
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Hamas takes advantage of Israeli wariness of military campaign
– Yaakov Lappin: Hamas-Israel truce would be “painkiller, not antibiotic”
– Israel Harel: Three cheers for the Goldin and Shaul families
– Bassam Tawil: Hamas blackmail, media silence
– Aviad Kleinber: The favela of Gaza
• This is a helluva photo from Reuters. I’m not only in awe of the complicated technology behind the Iron Dome, but the difficulty of getting a shot like this. So many things had to go right for Amir Cohen to get the shot that was in his mind’s eye — and he capitalized.
https://twitter.com/ReutersParisPix/status/1027828133418999808
• For commentary on the domestic scene, Bret Stephens, Avinoam Bar-Yosef, Isi Leibler, Daniel Gordis and Abraham Miller weigh in on the nation state law.
• Labour pains:
– Alan Johnson: Why the Nazi analogy and Holocaust inversion are antisemitic
– Stephen Bush: Why won’t the Labour Party’s antisemitism scandal go away?
– Tamara Berens: It’s worse than a scandal. It’s a strategy.
– Hannah Weisfeld and Alex Sobel: Labour’s antisemitism failure means it cannot be a credible critic of Israel
– Douglas Murray: The Left is deceiving itself over antisemitism
– Jonathan Tobin: The Corbyn precedent
– Matt Greene: This is what modern Holocaust denial looks like. No wonder British Jews are so scared
– Stephen Daisley: No, John McDonnell’s accusations of genocide against Palestinians are not ‘justifiable’
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– Raphael Ahren: The muy curioso tale of Colombia’s shock recognition of Palestine
– Michael Wilner: Where is Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan?
– Shmuel Rosner: Does Sacha Baron Cohen understand Israel?
– William Jacobson: American Association of University Professors: Don’t boycott the anti-Israel academic boycotters
– Nima Gholam Ali Pour: Sweden’s government Funds antisemitism
Featured image: CC0 Public Domain Pictures/Alice Birkin;
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