Today’s Top Stories
1. An Israeli delegation is reportedly in Egypt searching for the remains of IDF soldiers. i24 News picked up on Arab reports.
According to sources there are 22 Israeli soldiers missing in action in Egypt, among them 16 soldiers who have disappeared during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, on top of the missing soldiers who fought in the 1967 Six-Day War and the War of Attrition from 1967 to 1970.
2. Is this good news or bad news from Haaretz?
3. For the moment, Israel won’t publicly support the U.S.-Cuba thaw. Why?
Despite an official request from Washington, Israel has decided not to support the reconciliation between the United States and Cuba at this stage, senior officials in Jerusalem said on Wednesday.
The decision stems from Israel’s reluctance to antagonize the reconciliation’s opponents in the U.S. Congress, most of whom are Republicans and allies of Israel.
4. Readers’ Choice: Top 10 Posts of 2014: There’s no better way to capture the pulse of the HonestReporting community than to see what engaged and enraged readers as the stories were breaking.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Israel released the bodies of the two Har Nof synagogue terrorists to their families for burial. More on the story at Maan News and the Times of Israel.
• Ukrainian Jews fleeing civil war head for Israel, reports the Washington Post.
• Season’s tweetings from Iran’s supreme leader:
• There’s a growing concern in IDF intelligence that Hezbollah or Syrian jihadis will attack Israel. Haaretz explains:
Israel believes that with Assad’s consent, Hezbollah will exploit the small area the regime controls in the northern Golan Heights to initiate attacks against Israel as revenge for the aerial attacks attributed to Israel in Lebanese and Syrian territory.
Commentary/Analysis
• Father Gabriel Nadaf: Thanks to Israel, I can have a merry Christmas.
Within this chaos, only one island of sanity can be found where the Christians are not persecuted, where they enjoy freedom of religion and ritual, freedom of expression, and where they can live in peace without fear of genocide. That island is the State of Israel. The state in which I and my Christian brothers were born allows Christians complete freedom . . .
Only by standing alongside Israel and understanding that ensuring its Jewish identity will ensure its democratic regime will ensure the continuing flowering of the Christian community here, which looks fated to be the last remnant of Christianity in the Middle East.
Israeli Christians are becoming more active in civic life and the IDF, and Father Nadaf’s movement to integrate Christians into Israel is a big part of that.
• What’s the theme of today’s commentaries?
- In Gaza, unwanted escalation could be a slippery slope.
- Egypt strangles Gaza, but Israel gets the flack.
- When Gaza deterrence breaks down, shoot fiercely.
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Dimas Ario; flag CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com
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