Today’s Top Stories
1. Jordan executed two Islamic terrorists after ISIS posted a gruesome video of a Jordanian pilot’s execution. According to intelligence assessments ISIS likely killed Kaseasbeh weeks ago.
Even by ISIS’ sick standards, the video’s horrific and difficult to watch — Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh was burnt alive. Arab outrage throughout the Mideast was unusually palpable.
2. Mary McGowan Davis, a New York judge, is taking over the UN’s Gaza inquiry after William Schabas resigned. Poor woman: In a few weeks, McGowan Davis will have the unenviable task of presenting a stillborn report with Schabas’s fingerprints all over it to the UN Human Rights Council.
The inquiry’s work is pretty much done and the UN isn’t adding a third investigator to the team. According to Haaretz, McGowan Davis “is regarded as a lot more fair with regard to Israel,” but it’s too late in the game to make a significant difference.
Senior Foreign Ministry officials estimated on Tuesday night that the inquiry report, which is due to be published on March 23, will still be very hard on Israel.
Israel has already called for the inquiry to be scrapped.
3. UNESCO rejected a collection of Palestinian posters that were on track to be added to a register of world heritage. UNESCO chief Irina Bokova pulled the plug on the Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters fueled anti-Semitism. The Times of Israel writes:
Besides universal themes of occupation and the motifs depicting the struggle for liberation and peace — such as barbed wire and white doves — many of the posters feature machine guns and hand grenades, extolling armed resistance and terrorism. Some of the posters glorify Palestinian suicide attacks and other murderous missions against Israeli civilians, including a 1978 massacre known in Israel as the bloodiest terror attack in the country’s history.
You can see the posters (a portion of the collection) online.
4. How About Giving Israel’s Views a Chance?: Israel’s supporters cannot afford to wait until media coverage of Israel improves. It’s up to everyone who cares about Israel to help make Israel’s case to the world, one social network at a time. A special commentary published in the New York Jewish Week.
5. HR Radio: Should the Holocaust Be Fair Game for the BBC? Why is the media so eager to bury the Holocaust or twist it against Israel? Click below to hear Simon Plosker’s interview with the Voice of Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Palestinian Authority’s official newspaper, Al-Hayat-al-Jadida, apologized for publishing a cartoon of Mohammed.
• Iran admits it has been exporting arms production technology to Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups. How many UN resolutions are being casually brushed off?
• Threat of violence silences Palestinian journalists
Mideast Matters
• The New York Times reports that the United Arab Emirates chickened out suspended its involvement in anti-ISIS airstrikes in December after the Jordanian pilot was captured. The Gulf state was at odds with the US over the adequacy of coalition search and rescue assets for downed pilots like Muath al-Kasaesbeh.
• A visit to the Sinai by Reuters indicates that Egypt’s gaining ground in its battle against jihadists.
• Tweets that make me go hmmmmm. Even if the group is a copycat, I thought this was a pleasure Hamas reserved for itself.
Around the World
• The unfolding disclosures in Argentina are getting messier. A draft document requesting the arrest of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchener was found in the home of the Alberto Nisman’s home. The New York Times reports:
The 26-page document, which was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman’s apartment, also sought the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister. Both Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have repeatedly denied Mr. Nisman’s accusation that they tried to reach a secret deal with Iran to lift international arrest warrants for Iranian officials wanted in connection with the bombing.
• What’s the connection here?
- 3 soldiers guarding a Jewish center in France were stabbed.
- ‘No Jews’ job ad sparks outrage in France.
• Sir Martin Gilbert, a major historian who wrote 80 books — including many about the Holocaust, and Israel — succumbed to cancer. He was 78. More at the Jewish Chronicle and BBC.
Commentary/Analysis
• Yonah Bob explains how the Schabas resignation may very well save Israelis at International Criminal Court.
Whatever the UN did or did not ask Schabas about his prior employment in terms of conflicts of interest for investigating Israel and the Palestinians in a balanced manner, that he did not think that having worked for and gotten paid by the PLO on related international law issues was a conflict of interest is at the very least bizarre.
However he and the UNHRC want to characterize his resignation, Israelis will have a very viable argument that his resignation was an admission of bias.
They will then be able to argue that such bias renders the commission’s evidence and the potential basis of the ICC’s cases tainted.
• Quite a few countries have designated Hamas as a terror organization, so why is Hamas especially angry at an Egypt making the same designation? Ali Ibrahim answers:
What was clear then, and even clearer during the short-lived rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, was that Hamas was seeking in Sinai what Hezbollah had achieved in southern Lebanon: the occupation of a self-contained strip of land in another country, from where it could move freely—and, importantly, one far away from the tiny strip of land it occupies in Gaza, where it has been effectively cornered by the Israelis. That is, it sought, at the expense of Egypt, a place where it could more effectively exercise its efforts against the Palestinian leadership.
• For more commentary/analysis see Dore Gold (Shelve the Schabas report), Elliott Abrams (Schabas resigns a bit late), Herb Keinon (The indelible stain on the UN committee once chaired by William Schabas), Efraim Halevy (Should Israel favor containment or war?), Zvi Barel (Gaza has no savior) and Avi Issacharoff (Brutal killing shows ISIS suffering setbacks).
Featured image: CC BY-SA Thibault Martin-Lagardette via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
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