Today’s Top Stories
1. The IDF announced that it opened criminal investigations into five Operation Protective Edge incidents, including the Gaza beach shelling that killed four children, and a July attack on a UN school that killed 14 Palestinians. A total of 99 incidents are being probed, or will be in the coming weeks. YNet has best overall background. The Jerusalem Post details some of the incidents investigators are dealing with:
An officer in the prosecutor’s office decided not to open an investigation into a strike on a journalist in Gaza after it was discovered that he was a terror operative, suspected of carrying a missile in his vehicle.
In a separate development, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the UN will investigate (apart from the UN Human Rights Council) why its Gaza facilities were targeted, the deaths of UN personnel, an how Palestinian rockets wound up in UN schools.
2. Palestinian prisoners launched a one-day hunger strike after one prisoner hanged himself in his cell. Haaretz had clearest coverage.
3. Islamic State fanatics have declared war on Twitter, with threats of “lone wolf” attacks on Twitter employees. According to The Independent:
Islamic State (Isis) fanatics have threatened to kill Twitter employees if they continue to shut down their accounts and stop them spreading propaganda. The website is engaged in a constant battle to suspend accounts spouting hate speech, extremism and posting gory pictures and videos of executions in Iraq and Syria.
4. We expect the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to find attentive audiences post-Protective Edge. Prepare yourself for the fight, watch this slideshow, and share it with your friends. Fighting BDS: Tips and Strategies.
Israel and the Palestinians
• A 22-year old Palestinian died after a West Bank riot in a refugee camp. The Times of Israel reports that the IDF was carrying out an arrest raid in the al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah when Palestinians attacked soldiers with stones and Molotov cocktails.
The army said Palestinian rioters attacked security forces with Molotov cocktails and burning tires. Qatari threw an explosive at the soldiers, who returned fire with live ammunition, killing the man.
• The PA claims donors are wary of contributing to Gaza reconstruction as long as Hamas remains in power. AP writes:
With Hamas still committed to Israel’s destruction and with an arsenal of rockets still at its disposal, the donors are wary of rebuilding, Mustafa said. This summer’s war was the third in less than six years.
“Some donors say why sponsor Israeli wars in Gaza every two years,” Mustafa said.
• Egyptian mediators are still trying to bridge gaps between Israel, Hamas, the PA, and Egypt to avert a renewal of Gaza fighting. But Haaretz reports the diplomacy isn’t looking promising.
But the almost complete absence of reconstruction work in Gaza and Hamas’ difficulty in presenting any real achievements from the war are increasing the risk that the fighting will resume.
• This tweet by Reuters reporter Dan Williams reminds me that in the past, the words Tramadol, Gaza, and Israel mentioned together in the news meant that something was Israel’s fault.
• International Business Times: The IDF launched a multi-million dollar search operation for Hezbollah tunnels under the Israeli-Lebanese border.
An Israeli citizen who lives in one of the border towns near Lebanon told the television station that he regularly spotted cement mixers operating “surreptitiously” on the Lebanese side of the border.
“It is very suspicious,” he said. “I am certain that there are tunnels.”
• British parliamentarian Michael Gove lashed out at growing anti-Semitism in the UK, connecting it to the rise of radical Islam. He also called out the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The Daily Telegraph writes:
“We need to remind people that what began with a campaign against Jewish goods in the past ended with a campaign against Jewish lives. We need to spell out that this sort of prejudice starts with the Jews but never ends with the Jews. We need to stand united against hate,” Mr Gove told the annual dinner of the Holocaust Education Trust.
“Today, across Europe, there has been a revival of antisemitism which the enormity of the Holocaust should have rendered forever unthinkable,” he said.
Media Angles
• Was Steven Sotloff a marked man? His fixer’s identity may have been compromised by a naive Canadian photographer, leading to the journalist’s abduction.
• Expanding on ex-AP reporter Matti Friedman‘s take on media bias towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Seth Frantzman comments on domestic Israeli issues foreign journalists have bungled over the years.
Frantzman says the press corps’ reliance on Israeli media is a big part of the problem when it comes to coverage of domestic issues like poverty, religious-secular tensions, Bedouins, etc.
Israel’s problem is that members of the international media – such as AP bureau chiefs or others – who reside in Israel live within a milieu of Israelis who primarily lean to the left. They are fed information by NGOs such as Rabbis for Human Rights. Some of them already have the ready-made narrative of “giving a voice to those who have none” or “helping the weak.” A ready-made narrative of Israel already exists, set in stone since the 1960s, and tragically fed by former Israeli elites who dislike the current right-wing government and use foreign media to get back at it.
The international media thus naturally gravitates towards Israel’s critical press like Haaretz that has no problem publishing misleading stories such as the May 18 headline “settlers torch Palestinian orchard” for Lag B’omer which was subsequently corrected. In other countries, such as Russia, Turkey or the United Arab Emirates, the foreign media does the same, in terms of relying on local English-language media and NGOs for its stories, and the result is the same in each country: Where there is critical civil society and self-loathing left wing press, the international media will come away with negative stories, where there is censorship and forced patriotism, the media will parrot back patriotism. Rare is the foreign media that truly discovers a story for itself without handlers, fixers and the like.
On the other hand, the more interesting stories in Israeli society, such as about Jewish diversity, or about minority communities that don’t get media attention, such as the Druze, Circassians or Ahmadiya, are routinely ignored. Foreign media almost never expresses interest in things that galvanize large masses of Israelis, such as Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef’s funeral or Mizrahi musicians. The media simply is not attuned to Israeli popular society or its nuances; even its poverty, simply because Israeli media doesn’t care about this issue and doesn’t report about it in English.
• Ethan Bronner discussed What It’s Like to Run the NYT’s Most-Reviled Bureau.
• The Columbia Journalism Review examines what embedding the Ray Rice video reveals about news judgement — and why exactly editors handled it differently from the James Foley and Steven Sotloff videos.
Commentary/Analysis
• The Israel- New Zealand spat over an ambassadorial appointment is a relatively minor blip. But a New Zealand Herald staff-ed on the matter featured this over-the-top headline.
• President Barack Obama addresses the US on his strategy with the Islamic State tonight. See pre-speech takes at the New York Times, and NPR,
• For more commentary, see Elliott Abrams (Palestine in the Sinai?) and Ari Briggs (Get a grip, there’s no land grab).
Image: CC BY-NC flickr/Abby
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the Israel Daily News Stream on Facebook.
