Today’s Top Stories
1. Next-generation robots, buried sensors, and an underground barrier make up “Iron Spade,” Israel’s efforts to combat terror tunnels. Take your pick of Times of London or Al-Arabiya coverage.
2. Haaretz says that a too-detailed coverage of a cabinet meeting on the war earlier this month on Channel 2 was an intelligence bonanza for Hamas. The question is: Who leaked the cabinet’s deliberations to Channel 2’s Udi Segal? And was Segal irresponsible to report it?
The officers did well in presenting their professional opinion on the difficulties they would encounter if asked to send troops to reconquer Gaza. Segal and his channel did well in sharing these details with the Israeli public, including the hundreds of soldiers who might die in the operation and the millions of people who worried about the welfare of their loved ones.
The problem is that Segal’s scoop was Deif’s intelligence. Segal provided Hamas with valuable information about possible Israeli courses of action and the power dynamics behind the state’s decision-making that might allow Hamas to harden its position in the cease-fire negotiations.
Where should reporters draw the line between the public’s right to know and the fact that enemies glean intelligence from the news? What’s really in the public interest?
3. Milat, a pro-government Turkish daily paper, took aim at dual Turkish-Israeli citizens. The rationale? Since all Israeli nationals are obligated to serve in the IDF, dual nationals have Palestinian blood on their hands. Milat even used English for the headline. More on this at the Daily Zaman.
4. Journalist Corrects a Gaza Lie With Another Lie: Following up on the entire family reported to have been killed in Gaza that turned out to be alive, we now know that one member was a terrorist — a fact that the journalist didn’t bother to investigate.
5. Hamas Admits Intimidating Foreign Journalists: Hamas spokesperson confirms journalists were monitored, intimidated and even expelled over unfavorable reporting.
Israel and the Palestinians
• For more details on weekend developments, see Times of Israel liveblogging from today and Friday.
• Encouraging to read of Gazan voices of dissent against Hamas in Times of Israel and AP dispatches.
• Purported letter from inside Gaza tells of tunnel toil, Hamas cruelty
• Reuters takes a closer look at Mohammed Deif, who is masterminding Hamas’s war with Israel.
• I liked AP‘s look at how Israel’s bracing for the UN Human Rights Council’s probe of Operation Protective Edge.
• Around the world: A South African union leader under fire for urging attacks on Jews. Authorities investigate after Scottish Jew says he was fired for wearing a Jewish star. A Dutch government employee was suspended for saying “Zionists” created ISIS. Jews flee Paris after kosher shops, synagogues attacked. More than 20 cops were needed to restore order when pro-Palestinian activists wreaked havoc on a Tesco store in Birmingham and drawing scorn on Twitter.
Police arrested pro-Palestinian activists who stormed the roof of an Israeli company’s subsidiary in Melbourne. Protesters blocked an Israeli ship from unloading cargo at the Port of Oakland, with planned protests at more ports in California, Seattle and Vancouver.
• Henk Zanoli, a Dutch man honored by Yad Vashem for saving lives during the Holocaust, returned his medal after six relatives by marriage were killed in a Gaza airstrike. The Economist, New York Times, BBC — among others — picked up on Haaretz‘s scoop, a story of a seeming moral turnabout. Although the IDF didn’t get back to any of the reporters, Elder of Ziyon managed to poke a big hole in the story. A guest in the house at the time of of the air strike, Mohammed Mahmoud al-Maqadma, was a Hamas “military branch operative.”
• London’s Tricycle Theater did a U-turn on the UK Jewish Film Festival. The change of heart on the Israeli embassy’s financial contribution — a pittance of the festival’s overall budget — likely came about because of the theater’s unhappy donors. Speaking of Israeli film festivals, Australian police are taking legal action to prevent a pro-Palestinian protest at the Israel Film Festival in Sydney.
• Ahead of a European Union boycott, the Israeli Agricultural Ministry instructed dairy and livestock producers to separate their products from over the Green Line. The EU will no longer recognize Israeli veterinary certification of West Bank products. Those products will instead be diverted to local and non-EU markets. Similar arrangements for fish and wine products will soon be implemented as well. Haaretz coverage.
• Israel HaYom: Israel’s first pre-military course tailored for Christian Arabs wrapped up with 30 graduates. Background reading: AFP and Israel’s Cross to Bear.
• Australia’s Mike Carlton controversy ain’t burning out yet, with the ex-Sydney Morning Herald columnist now being sued for racial vilification. This after Carlton quit the SMH after sending foul-mouthed and abusive emails and tweets to readers responding to an Israel-bashing column.
Commentary/Analysis
• Let’s see — the ISIS offensive in Iraq has claimed the lives of 5,500 civilians while in Ukraine, the death toll doubled in a two-week period. Loads of civilians are killed indiscriminately or discriminated against for execution. All that explains why I think this cartoon by the Hamilton Spectator‘s Graeme Mackay is simply ignorant.
• British MP Andrew Percy visited Israel to see the situation for himself. He shares his thoughts in the Sunday Express:
Yes, I spoke with politicians and journalists but more interestingly I took time to tour Israel (at my own expense) and speak with ordinary Israelis: taxi drivers, waiters, hotel receptionists and business people.
I was able to contrast these experiences with some of the commentary in the media. Watching certain news outlets it became clear that some had chosen a side . . .
Balance in this debate seems to have been lost. A terrorist network has been made to look like the victim with some asking incredibly why Hamas isn’t allowed a missile defence shield! While Jewish people get attacked in the streets of Western Europe for simply being Jewish, Hamas terrorists are relieved of the responsibility for the plight of their own people.
• In a hospital under fire from Gaza, we see the best of Israel.
• For more commentary, see Avi Issacharoff (Egypt’s truce proposal won’t bring peace), Lawrence Solomon (The UN’s phony refugees), Daniel Gordis (Reawakening Israeli youth to life-long threats), Mort Zuckerman (Why they hate Israel), Samuel Morrison (Sinn Fein hypocrisy on Gaza insults our intelligence)
• What’s the common theme here? Brendan O’Neill (In Britain, the anti-Semitism is more refined — Wall St. Journal via Google News), Enrique Krauze (Anti-Semitism stirs in Latin America), Karol Markowicz (anti-Semitism around the world). Last but not least, at the Times of London, former chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, weighs in:
It has been this rush to judgment, the assumption that if people are killed it is Israel’s fault, that convinces many of us that something other than the normal passions of politics is at work. In the 12 years since, the situation has become steadily worse. Criticism of Israel is not antisemitism, but demonisation is.
• For a sense of what the critics are saying, see The Independent, The Guardian, and Globe & Mail.
• Jewish Chronicle editor apologises for running Gaza appeal advert
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Iraqi Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki resigned, and throwing his support behind political rival Haider al-Abadi.
Maliki’s removal opens the door for further U.S. military support to Iraq.
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Kent Landerholm, Rabbi Sacks via YouTube/Robert Salazar
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
