Today’s Top Stories
1. US President Donald Trump decertified the Iran nuclear deal, kicking the issue to Congress to decide on sanctions or perhaps withdrawing from the accord. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the move. Iran’s clearly angered, but the Associated Press assesses that Tehran still needs the deal. See more commentary below.
Meanwhile, the US Treasury Dept. slapped sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “for providing support to a number of terrorist groups, including Hizballah and Hamas, as well as to the Taliban.” However, the Treasury statement stopped short of specifically labeling the IRGC as a terror group.
You ask, What is Iran’s Revolutionary Guard?
2. Hamas and Fatah officials signed a national unity deal in Cairo due to take effect December 1. Several clauses were leaked on social media. Notably, Arab reports picked up by Ynet indicate that Hamas agreed to cease terror attacks in the West Bank, and that any decisions about war or signing a peace agreement with Israel be made jointly.
Israel set a series of additional conditions that must be met before it would recognize the agreement, including a halt in the digging of tunnels and manufacturing of missiles, an end to terror attacks against Israel, the immediate release of Israeli citizens Avera Mengistu and Hisham a-Said and the return of the remains of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin.
Signing for Hamas was the organization’s new Number 2 man, Saleh Arouri. A terrorist commander who was recently bounced out of Turkey and Qatar, Arouri is widely regarded as the mastermind of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, which sparked a war in Gaza.
3. Big changes at UNESCO. Shortly after the US and Israel withdrew from the the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the organization unexpectedly elected Audrey Azoulay, a French Jewish woman as its new director general.
Curiously, the Trump administration’s decision to leave UNESCO was not coordinated with Jerusalem, according to Haaretz, taking Israeli officials by surprise. Per the Wall St. Journal, “The withdrawal will take effect at the end of next year,” and that the US will “maintain its connection with the organization as a nonmember, observer state.”
The Jerusalem Post takes a closer look at how Azoulay, a former minister of culture during the Francois Hollande presidency, became the unlikely new chief.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Belgium suspended PA construction projects after a Palestinian school was renamed for notorious terrorist.
• Hamas is using lasers to blind Israeli soldiers along the Gaza border. Can you imagine the outrage if Israel did that to Palestinians?
• Islamic State set up a training camp in the Syrian Golan near the Israeli border, Israeli media reports say.
• Worth reading: How the Balfour Declaration laid the roots of Israel.
Around the World
• CNN: Victims of Palestinian terror seek Supreme Court blessing to sue multinational corporations. The 6,000 victims are targeting the Jordanian-based Arab Bank arguing it “‘knowingly and willingly’ used its New York branch to transfer millions of US dollars that were used to finance terrorist attacks.”
The attacks occurred between 1995 and 2005 in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
The victims do not claim the bank was involved in the planning of the attacks, only the processing of financial transactions.
• BBC to air kibbutz volunteer reality show.
• Brazilian newspaper’s five-letter response to pro-Palestinian crossword clue: ‘Sorry’
• ACLU sues over Kansas law banning contracts with Israel boycotters
• Wisconsin is latest state to introduce anti-BDS legislation.
• Iran plans to re-block Waze due to its Israeli background. But Tehran traffic jams will still be Israel’s fault, right?
• Vandals destroy sukkah at Kansas State U.
• Jerusalem Post: One of Denmark’s largest pension funds, Sampension, is barring investment in four companies that operate in West Bank settlements. Its blacklist specifically mentions Bank Leumi, Bank HaPoalim, the Israeli telecomm company Bezeq, and the German- based Heidelberg Cement.
“In addition to these four companies, Sampension said that it was talking with six other multinational corporations about how their economic activity in settlements may violate “international principles.”
• A discomfiting number of Hezbollah goons entered Germany disguised as refugees.
It is unclear how many Hezbollah terrorists disguised themselves as asylum-seekers to enter Germany. But according to Germany’s federal intelligence agency, there are 950 active Hezbollah operatives in the Federal Republic.
Commentary/Analysis
• Australian columnist Greg Sheridan (or click via Twitter) fires a broadside at Australia’s ABC News for it’s dismissive response to lawmaker Michael Danby’s criticism of the network’s coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
To humanise an innocent Jewish Israeli grandfather or child brutally murdered in their home by a terrorist seems somehow or other to be supportive of Israel, so it is rarely done.
Danby in his ads was responding to this profound emotional truth. The ABC’s response to Danby’s criticisms is dismaying. It exhibits bullying, hubris and unchecked power.
• Over at the New York Times, MK Michael Oren got a soapbox to call on the US to “fix or nix” the Iran deal. The Gray Lady also gave a platform to Iranian Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo and weighed in with its own staff-ed.
And at The Atlantic, Israeli lawmaker Yair Lapid squared off against Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Plenty more commentary about the Iran nuke deal:
– Raphael Ahren: With new Iran strategy, Trump rips page out of Netanyahu’s playbook
– Nahum Barnea: Trump’s Iran strategy presents new kind of challenge for Israel
– Amos Yadlin, Avner Golov: Preparing an alternative strategy before withdrawing from the nuclear agreement with Iran
– Jonathan Schanzer: Ending America’s paralyzed Iran policy
– David Harris: Revisiting the Iran deal
– Amb. Daniel Shapiro: No one’s got a clue what’s next on Iran
– Ben Lynfield: Iran to take wait-and-see approach
– Elliott Abrams: The coming confrontation between Israel and Iran
– Tzvi Kahn: (Mis)Reading the IAEA reports on Iran’s nuclear program
• I can’t decide whether to list this Daily Telegraph staff-ed with the nuclear deal or UNESCO commentaries below.
Telegraph view: Trump was right to pull out of Unesco and the Iran dealhttps://t.co/kcUmRZuVjV
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) October 14, 2017
• Plenty of commentary on UNESCO . . .
– Sohrab Ahmari: Trump made the right move on UNESCO
– New York Post (staff-ed): Exiting UNESCO was the right thing to do
– Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi: UNESCO: A Reagan redux
– A.J. Caschetta: Trump dumps UNESCO, aka the ‘UN Erasure, Slander, and Cover-up Organization’
– Wall St. Journal: America out of UNESCO (click via Twitter)
– Los Angeles Times (staff-ed) Withdrawing from UNESCO further isolates the U.S. and risks undercutting international influence
• Plenty of commentary about the Palestinian unity puzzle:
– Avi Issacharoff: Fatah-Hamas unity: Rub your eyes in disbelief
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Israel should accept the Palestinian reconciliation deal
– Eli Lake: US sees opportunity in Palestinian reconciliation
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Hamas’ step-by-step plan
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas creates state within a state
– Herb Keinon: The Lebanonization of Gaza
– Yaakov Amidror: The real test for the Palestinian reconciliation is disarming Hamas
– Alex Fishman: A hopeless reconciliation agreement
– Bassam Tawil: What is really uniting the Palestinians?
• Memo to Donald Macintyre: The Balfour Declaration didn’t leave the Palestinians stateless, Palestinian and Arab rejection of peace in 1947 and 1967 did. But acknowledging that reality would spoil the mood you create in the book you plug in your commentary in The Guardian.
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA xeeliz; atom CC0 Pixabay; Azoulay CC BY-NC-ND Headquarters Paris; crossword CC BY Chip Griffin; Danby via Wikimedia Commons; Iranian flag via Wikimedia Commons; Palestinian flag via YouTube/Darweesh Q; puzzle vector CC BY-SA Psyon;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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