Today’s Top Stories
1. Are Palestinian terrorists planning attacks in order to influence the Israeli elections?
2. Haaretz: The White House is weighing harsher responses to settlement activity.
One of the aspects of this that is being looked into by the U.S. government is whether American action against the settlements at this point would weaken Netanyahu in Israeli public opinion, or do just the opposite, by portraying him as one who doesn’t cave in to international pressure.
3. The judge who acquitted Hosni Mubarak wrote in his 280-page ruling that the Egyptian revolution was conspiracy between Israel, the US, and the Muslim Brotherhood. More on this at the Jerusalem Post and Christian Science Monitor.
Judge Mahmoud Kamel al-Rashidi began his decision by describing the January 2011 revolution as a Zionist and US conspiracy hatched to divide the country, according to a report on Egypt’s Mada Masr website . . .
The judge added that the Muslim Brotherhood movement was a key conspirator by aiding Hamas and Hezbollah to infiltrate the country in order to carry out a plan to topple Mubarak’s regime on January 28, 2011, the report said.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Britain, France, and Germany are putting together a draft resolution outlining the principles of Israeli-Palestinian peace. It’s to counter a more ambitious Palestinian proposal which the UN Security Council is expected to vote on in the coming weeks. Times of Israel coverage.
• Palestinian terror goes online to recruit and incite.
• Australian parliament debates symbolic recognition of Palestine. Haaretz coverage.
• Reuters: A UN team has already begun investigating Israeli attacks on UN sites, and how rockets were found on several of its facilities during the Gaza war.
• While I appreciate Vladimir Putin acknowledging Jewish ties to the Temple Mount (sorry, Abbas), using the holy site for Moscow’s P.R. in a policy speech is lowbrow.
• US Congress passes Israel strategic partnership bill
Mideast Matters
• Jihadi letters home: Get me out of here!
In a series of letters seen by the newspaper, some of the 376 Frenchmen currently fighting in Syria have complained that, rather than participating in battle as expected, they have been acting as jihadi henchmen.
“I do nothing other than distribute clothing and food. I occasionally help clean some weapons and transport the bodies of fallen jihadists from the front,” one unhappy militant complains. “Winter is here. It’s getting very hard.”
Another complained: “I’m fed up. They make me do the washing up.”
“My iPod doesn’t work any more here. I have to come back,” a third one wrote, complaining about his mission to fight in Syria.
In its report, Le Figaro said it had been noticed that some of the French were beginning to want to leave.
• The US and Iran are trying hard not to look allies, even as both pound ISIS with airstrikes, reports the New York Times.
In Iraq, a degree of coordination between the American military and Iran’s is imperative but also awkward, making it appear that the United States is working in tandem with its adversary. Often a single Iraqi officer will serve as an intermediary between the American-led air campaign and the Iranians.
Commentary/Analysis
• Aaron David Miller comments on — among other things — past US attempts to influence the Israeli results. Jonathan Tobin expands on this point.
• The world won’t wait for Israel’s elections, notes Herb Keinon:
Imagine calling the country’s 101 emergency hotline, only to have a tape machine answer that there will be no one able to take calls until March 18.
That, essentially, is what Jerusalem has in store for the diplomatic emergencies breaking out, well, almost everywhere.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Emmanuel Navon (The Jews tolerated by Islam), Boaz Bismuth (France’s theater of the absurd), Professor Eli Avraham (The hypocrisy academic boycott), and a staff-ed on the elections at the Financial Times (via Google News).
Featured Image: CC BY-NC flickr/Heidi Schachtschneider; UN CC BY-NC-ND flickr/United Nations Photo
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