Israel Daily News Stream 05/09/2012
May 9, 2012 15:20 by Pesach Benson
Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Note to readers: The HonestReporting office will be closed for Lag B’Omer. There will be no Israel Daily News Stream tomorrow.
The world reacts to Israel’s national unity government. Salam Fayyad all but eulogizes Fayyadism. And Google Earth catches Hezbollah building new bases.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Salam Fayyad all but eulogizes Fayyadism in a meeting with reporters from news services like Reuters and Maan News. If you’re wondering how it all unravelled, take a look at The New Republic. Reporter Ben Birnbaum writes that the PA’s unilateral statehood push was what really did in Fayyad. Why?
“From Fayyad’s perspective, all the U.N. bid did was rack up a huge tab on his institution-building credit card,” Hussein Ibish, senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, told me. The bill arrived in October in the form of $192 million of frozen U.S. aid and another $100 million in tax and customs revenue that Israel refused to hand over. Faced with a budget crisis, Fayyad was forced to introduce an unpopular program of tax hikes and spending cuts.
• Israel’s Supreme Court unanimously rules against two Palestinian hunger strikers who challenged the extension of their administrative detention. The Jerusalem Post writes:
In Monday’s ruling, Rubinstein said that revealing classified intelligence material about an administrative detainee could harm the agents and their methodology.
It was right, therefore, that the courts should be the body designated to examine that material, he said . . .
In the ruling, the justices said that classified information and military court rulings on the prisoners proved that they were active in terrorist group, Islamic Jihad.
• Thumbs up to HonestReporting Canada for forcing a Toronto Star correction. Columnist Haroon Siddiqui incorrectly wrote that 1,500 Palestinians were challenging their administrative detention.
Someone should notify NPR‘s Sheera Frenkel . . .
• In the Mail & Guardian, Amir Mizroch challenges journalist Kevin Bloom, who argues that South African Jewry needs a messiah like Peter Beinart to end its monolithic groupthink support for Israel.
• Rare good news from the Irish Times: Justice Minister Alan Shatter slammed artists who boycott Israel, accusing them of “cultural fascism.”
• Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, got a soapbox in The Guardian‘s Comment is Free section to weigh in on the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions campaign.
National Unity Buzz
• Plenty of commentary and analysis of Israel’s out-of-the-blue national unity deal. For commentary and analysis on the political situation, see Elliott Abrams, Aaron David Miller, David Horovitz, Ron Ben-Yishai, Jeffrey Goldberg, Meir Javedanfar, Dan Ephron, Time, and a Times of London staff-ed (paywall).
• See also the Times of Israel assessment of the deal’s winners and losers. And the Jerusalem Post‘s looks at how citizen journalists and social media beat the mainstream press on the story.
jeb stuart
4:50 pm
May 09, 2012
Doesn’t Ben Birnbaum have problems of his own in reporting on the state of politics in Israel. It seems to me i remember an article that was published recently that was off in many respects. In the article for the New Republic, i have to note, he seems to heap discredit on Netanyahu for pulling the rug out from under Fayyad after 9 months of suspending building settlements, they were resumed after the Palestinians insisted on naming East Jerusalem their capital. I can not see how Netanyahu could have done anything else. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, until the US recognizes the right and the de facto existence of the Israeli capital inJerusalem Ican not see how they will get around that conundrum. It seems to be a built in intentional mechanism the Palestinians have applied to derail talks just when they are making progress. in that respect I do not believe Netanyahu yanked the rug out from under Fayyad unless Birnbaum thinks the Israeli’s capital is Tel-Aviv. I do not know if it is an error in reporting or simply a difference of belief in what constitutes the Israeli state. I believe Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
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Avi
5:00 pm
May 09, 2012
“According to the Daily Star:
But the construction work also raises questions as to the purpose of these facilities, which are easily visible to Israel’s near daily aerial reconnaissance violations”
“Violations”!
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Brent Pudsey
1:18 am
May 10, 2012
Interesting how money is an issue with everyone. Thank you Honesty Reporting for your insight and wit into the situation in the Middle East. I only hope that with all the military activity in terms of planning and stategic efforts that war is not on the horizon.
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M.Sphardi
3:27 am
May 10, 2012
How powerful propaganda is! Goebbels and Hitler did it! The Arab League and Palestinian Arabs did it! and how careless Israel has been about outshouting the Arabs by making crystal clear that far more Jews from Musllim countries were expelled in revenge for the Palestinian flight.
It’s finished! Drop the subject of the Palestinian Arabs or put both issues on the table at the same time: the remaining 50,000 actual Palestinian “refugees” still alive and the estimated 70,000 Arab Jews still alive. On the table too should be whatever they and their ancestors lost in the course of these misfortunes. Finish it all. The Arab countries have much to gain from the Israelis and together they could vastly improve the lives of all who live in the area. The hatred has no source other than obscure passages of the Koran, manipulated Arab masses diverted from their real oppressors, and paranoid jealousy/fear of the Jews.
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Len Kurtz
7:18 pm
Jun 22, 2012
Apparently, a new discovery shows that skid marks help render the bomb harmless.
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