Everything you need to know about today’s coverage of Israel and the Mideast. Join the Israel Daily News Stream on Facebook.
Today’s Top Stories:
1. The Gaza border’s hot again. I liked BBC‘s report of the IAF strike on two members of the group, Global Jihad. Tala’at Halil Muhammad Jarbi, the primary target, helped plan and carry out a June terrorist attack along the Israeli-Egyptian border. Saeed Fashafshe, an Israeli-Arab father of four from Haifa, was killed in that incident.
Since Sunday, the Palestinians have fired more than 100 rockets in response. Haaretz assesses the Palestinian thinking behind the barrage.
2.IAF jets broke the sound barrier over Lebanon after shooting down a drone over Israeli airspace. Although there’s no evidence of who sent the drone,media speculation centered on a Hezbollah-Iran tandem. Indeed, one Iranian official claimed that the drone managed to take photos of Dimona. According to the Daily Telegraph:
However, regional security analysts agree the drone employed in Israel was most likely engaged in an intelligence gathering mission, possibly to test the Israeli military’s strategy in the event of an infiltration.
The IDF released footage of the UAV being shot down.
3. The Jerusalem Post reports that the UN completed its investigation of Khulood Badawi. She’s the UN worker who posted a false photo tweet in March. HonestReporting broke the story, and delivered a petition calling for her ouster as an information officer at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Unfortunately, the Post says details of the UN report’s findings haven’t been released yet.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Once again, Big Media (in this case, CNN) blames the security barrier for the problems of Palestinian Christians.
However, there’s more to the story than meets the eye: Christians are cowed by land theft, forced conversions, extortion, and murder, and are extremely reluctant to discuss these problems on the record. Sara Sidner would do well to read this remarkable 2009 Wall Street Journal dispatch.
• A Human Rights Watch report accusing Hamas of torturing Palestinians. The LA Times sums it up in a nutshell:
According to Stork, Hamas is violating international law by subjecting civilians to military courts and denying prisoners their rights. The group accused Hamas of executing three detainees after obtaining forced confessions through torture. In 2011, 147 complaints of torture were filed against Hamas, according to Human Rights Watch.
• The Paris municipality signed an agreement with the non-existent “East Jerusalem district.” Israeli officials are furious. The Times of Israel writes:
Picard said that under French law his regional council was not obligated to coordinate with the Israeli government, or the French, on decentralized cooperation agreements. Thirteen such agreements already exist between Île-de-France and other regions — primarily state capitals — including Beirut (Lebanon), Yerevan (Armenia) and Hanoi (Vietnam).
• Don’t miss Spengler, who says West Bank Palestinians don’t appreciate how good their life is, compared to the rest of the Arab world:
Meanwhile the living standard of Arabs in the so-called Occupied West Bank is double that of pre-crisis Egypt; compared with Egypt or Syria, it is an oasis of peace and plenty.
After years of intoning that the Palestine issue was the crux of the world’s security problems, the world has left the keys in the wreck and walked away from it. And the Oslo process is ending with a whimper rather than a bang.
• Wall St. Journal: US officials sanctioned two Lebanese charity groups controlled by Hamas.
• After eight years of covering Israel for The Independent, Donald Macintyre penned his farewell column.
• Aaron David Miller: Stop Blaming Bibi
The peace process is temporarily closed for the season, and not just because of Netanyahu.
