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. A pair of Canadian papers apologized for mistakenly reporting that actor Bruce Willis had previously boycotted Israel. Toronto Star public editor, Kathy English, elaborated on how the mistake happened. The Globe & Mail simply corrected its original coverage.
2. Russia’s supplying Syria with advanced Yakhonts anti-ship missiles. The NY Times, which broke the story, explains why these “ship-killer” rockets matter in a civil war where rebels have zero naval capabilities:
Unlike Scud and other longer-range surface-to-surface missiles that the Assad government has used against opposition forces, the Yakhont antiship missile system provides the Syrian military a formidable weapon to counter any effort by international forces to reinforce Syrian opposition fighters by imposing a naval embargo, establishing a no-fly zone or carrying out limited airstrikes.
Later in the weekend, a Russian diplomat explained to Time the reason for the sale:
Weapons systems like the S-300, he said, “would simply set the right conditions” for negotiating Assad’s departure.
Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted that Israel would take action against “the leakage of advanced weapons to Hezbollah . . .”
3. The EU’s delaying plans to label settlement produce after a request from the US. According to Haaretz:
According to two European diplomats, the Americans said enforcing the decision at this time would harm Kerry’s efforts to revive negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
4. Syrian Propaganda on South African Television: Yarden Frankl responds when a South African TV show blames Israel for Syria’s civil war.
5. The Jerusalem Post looks at those “battle-hardened in the trenches of media warfare,” including HonestReporting’s Simon Plosker.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Visiting San Francisco, the Rev. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe was appalled by some pro-Palestinian ads accusing Israel of apartheid. Rev. Dr. Meshoe lived through South African apartheid and has no patience with the ignorance of the ads. Published in the San Francisco Examiner.
• Worth reading: Award-winning British writer Howard Jacobson slams Professor Stephen Hawking and the BDS movement in The Independent‘s op-ed pages.
To those who ask why Israel alone of all offending countries is to be boycotted, the answer comes back loud and clear from boycotters that because they cannot change the whole world, that is no reason not to try to change some small part of it, in this case the part where they feel they have the most chance of success, which also just happens to be the part that’s Jewish. That this is, in fact, a “back-handed compliment” to Jews, John MacGabhann, general secretary of the pro-boycott Teachers’ Union of Ireland, made clear when he talked of “expecting more of the Israeli government, precisely because we would anticipate that Israeli governments would act in all instances and ways to better uphold the rights of other”, which implies that he expects less of other governments, and does not anticipate them to act in all instances and ways better to uphold the rights of others. And why? He can only mean, reader, because those other governments are not Jewish.
• The IDF’s non-lethal crowd-control measure’s are going Nerf. The Jerusalem Post reports that the army’s replacing its rubber bullets with sponge-tipped bullets.
- Can Israeli Arabs benefit from the country’s start-up boom?
- Syrian missiles targeting Tel Aviv reportedly put on standby.
- Saudi princes laundering money for Hezbollah?
