Today’s Top Stories
1. Last night, a Palestinian driver rammed into a three soldiers near Bethlehem in another car attack. After an overnight manhunt,Hamam Masalmeh, a 23-year-old Palestinian from Beit Awwa, near Hebron, turned himself in to police, saying he lost control of the car. The army’s investigating the possibility that this was a hit and run accident. The three soldiers are in moderate to critical condition.
2. The incitement continues. PA National Security Forces posted on its official Facebook page a cartoon of Israel “raping” the Temple Mount. And Hamas cartoons plugging an “automobile intifada” urge Palestinian drivers to attack more Israelis.
3. The International Criminal Court isn’t going to investigate the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara. Reuters scooped the story.
“The information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes under the Court’s jurisdiction have been committed in the context of interception and takeover of the Mavi Marmara by IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) soldiers on 31 May 2010,” read the paper seen on Wednesday.
But the lawyers decided the crimes in question were not of sufficient gravity to fall under the court’s jurisdiction, the papers added.
Prosecutors added they had reached these conclusions on the basis of publicly available information.
4. Did Israeli Police “Storm Al-Aqsa Mosque?”: Failing on context, the Daily Telegraph gives false impression Israeli police “stormed” the al-Aqsa Mosque.
5. Vote for This Year’s Dishonest Reporting Award: It’s that time of the year. Nominate this year’s worst news service or journalist and make your voice heard.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Wall St. Journal (via Google News) picked up on one of Jordan’s stranger complaints against Israel:
Waqf officials and Jordan charged that police had desecrated the site by entering into the heart of it for the first time with weapons and without removing their shoes.
Funny, but one of the images accompanying the WSJ dispatch is an AFP/Getty photo of shoe-clad Palestinians cleaning out the mosque. No end to the sacrilege: Ahmad Gharabli took two more equally impious footgear photos.
• Thousands of Israelis attended the funeral of Jedan Assad, who was killed in yesterday’s terror attack. The Druze Border Police chief inspector is survived by a three-year-old son and a wife five-months pregnant.
• YNet: The Government Press Office summoned the bureau chief of Turkeys’ Anadolu News Agency over an ugly tweet. The tweet was since removed. The screengrab’s via Ilan Ben Zion.
• AFP looks at the Israel-Cyprus-Turkey triangle.
• The New York Times visited the Golan with the IDF to learn more about how Israel eyes Syria’s chaos.
Commentary/Analysis
• One was a terrorist, the other a policeman
Both were Arabic speakers, both had strong family ties and both had links to Islam – al-Akkari was a devout Muslim, Assad a member of the Druze sect, which is an offshoot of Islam. Their families were both proud of them, and both blamed politicians for the violence in Jerusalem.
But the similarities end there.
• Navi Pillay, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and ex-International Criminal Court judge, urges the Palestinians to join the ICC and hold Israel accountable for its Gaza military operations and settlement activity. The op-ed soapbox was provided by — who else? — the New York Times.
• Tom Friedman: I have no idea if Palestinians are reliable peace partners, but Israel should “test, test, test, and test again.”
• This is amusing: British author Will Self (who renounced his Judaism), reviews books by Shlomo Sand (who renounced his Judaism) and Julie Burchill (a sharp-writing philo-Semite).
• For more commentary/analysis, see David Horovitz (Jerusalem in the grip of unholy religious fervor), Damien McElroy (What is an intifada?), Einat Wilf (EU, stop the peace prodding), Zvi Barel (Israel-Jordan ties put to the test), Professor Thomas Doherty (ASA boycott of Israel backfires), and Samantha Badgen (Jihadi domesticity).
Image: CC BY flickr/woodleywonderworks
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
