Today’s Top Stories
1. The UN Security Council condemned Israel “in the strongest terms” for cross-border fire that killed a Spanish UNIFIL peacekeeper, it also appointed a panel to investigate. Here’s another example of Israel being singled out by the UN:
The Security Council offered no condemnation of the Hezbollah attack that killed the two Israeli soldiers which set off the Israeli response.
2. Speaking to the US military publication, Stars and Stripes, NBC News anchor Brian Williams recanted and apologized for claiming to have been on a helicopter downed in Iraq back in 2003.
Williams has repeated the story numerous times since then, but the tale got new attention when Williams aired a followup and was then called out by a US military veteran who was there. The anchor apologized on air.
The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.
“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”
I don’t know what screwed up his mind to “conflate,” or imagine, being on a downed helicopter, and neither does the Twitterverse. Last word for now goes to Jay Rosen.
3. A new judge is taking over Alberto Nisman’s investigation of the 1994 AMIA bombing. Judge Daniel Rafecas is an expert in Holocaust studies and has been honored by several Argentine Jewish groups in the past.
4. Did Sky News Presenter Justify Anti-Semitism? Can UK anti-Semitism ever be justified? “It can, if you are a Palestinian,” according to Sky News presenter Eamonn Holmes.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Palestinians look to exiled Mohammed Dahlan for successor to Abbas. According to the Financial Times (click via Google News), the former Gaza security boss has the backing of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and even Hamas. Hamas?
Hamas, which is voicing frustration over the Palestinian Authority’s failure to rebuild after the war last summer or pay its 40,000 civil servants, has allowed the Dahlanists to organise “as a pressuring tool on President Abbas,” Mr al-Masri acknowledges.
• Israel set to withhold more Palestinian customs revenues
• The UN appointed Nikolay Mladenov to replace Robert Serry as its top envoy to the Mideast. Mladenov formerly served as Bulgaria’s foreign minister and the UN’s top envoy to Iraq. Associated Press coverage.
• Tunisia’s Malek Jaziri sure knows how to raise a racket. The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) is investigating Jaziri who (once again) dodged a match against an Israeli opponent. No love here:
Malek Jaziri quit after winning the first set 6-3 against sixth-seeded Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan in the first round of the Open Sud de France.
Tournament organizers said in an email to The Associated Press that Jaziri, who called for a trainer twice during the match, “suffered again from an elbow injury he picked up” at the Australian Open.
Had Jaziri beaten Istomin, he would have played Israel’s Dudi Sela in the next round. In 2013, Tunisia’s tennis federation ordered Jaziri to withdraw from a match against an Israeli opponent at a second-tier tournament in Uzbekistan.
• The Prime Minister’s Office is pushing for a web site dedicated to official government news and PR. Haaretz reports that a tender has already been issued.
• Hamas is investigating the kidnap and torture of Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Maghayer. Maghayer, now free, also works as an advisor for Dutch diplomats was tortured for several hours by people claiming to belong to ISIS. Details at the Jerusalem Post and AFP.
Around the World
• A Jordanian airstrike on ISIS killed 55 goons. And according to Arab reports picked up by the Jerusalem Post, Jordan is mulling a ground campaign against ISIS.
The Amman-based daily newspaper Al Arab Al Yawm reported on Thursday that the Jordanians are mulling a “quick-strike, lightning blow” against ISIS. The report also stated that the government would then re-evaluate its strategy within the framework of the international, US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State.
• Don’t say the world didn’t know about ISIS atrocities:
- ISIS executed nearly 100 prisoners in Janury
- UN: ISIS tortures, kills Iraqi children
- ISIS executes 3 of its Chinese militants
• Iran’s shielding Bashar Assad from chemical weapons condemnation.
Amid the diplomatic wrangling, Syrians have suffered — grotesquely and agonizingly — in chlorine attacks across the country.
• British media picked up on a Community Security Trust report (pdf format) finding the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK at an all-time high. Take your pick of Reuters, The Guardian, or BBC coverage. The Times of London put the numbers in perspective:
Antisemitic attacks and hate crimes doubled last year to a record of 1,168 — or more than three a day on average.
Commentary/Analysis
• Jeff Robbins, a former US delegate to the UN Human Rights Council, slammed William Schabas and the UN’s bias against Israel. He writes in the Boston Herald:
Hillel Neuer, head of United Nations Watch, put it succinctly. “You can’t spend several years calling for the prosecution of someone,” he pointed out, “and then suddenly act as his judge.” But this was no inadvertent ethical lapse; it was a deliberate disregard of ethics by a body whose treatment of Israel is one part “Alice in Wonderland,” one part Pinocchio. As Schabas himself said in his resignation letter, his record of anti-Israelism was well-known to the U.N.
Georgetown University Law Professor Christine Cerna, whose candidacy for chair of the inquiry was apparently vetoed by the Arab bloc, has written that Schabas was selected precisely because of his bias. “I don’t think Bill Schabas could have been selected to lead the ‘independent’ inquiry,” she observed, “if he hadn’t made the comments he has made.”
See also Ambassador Alan Baker, who lays out how the Schabas appointment violated all accepted rules and norms governing fact-finding missions.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Allison Kaplan Sommer (ISIS horror movies: To watch, or cover the eyes?), and Andy Carvin (Graphic footage: Fanning the flames or bearing witness?). Last but not least, a New York Daily News staff-ed calls out the hypocrisy of Mahmoud Abbas investigating a Mohammed cartoon so soon after marching in Paris for Charlie Hebdo.
Featured image: CC BY-SA Estitxu Carton via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; tennis CC BY-SA Assaf Yekuel and si.robi via Wikimedia Commons; Dahlan via YouTube/Dahlan; Schabas via YouTube/RobertHJacksonCenter
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
