Today’s Top Stories
1. A UK parliamentary committee report called for urgent government action against anti-Semitism. Most attention was drawn to the suggestion that restraining orders (in UK, they’re called anti-social behavior orders, or asbo for short) against anti-Semitic online trolls.
The report noted that there’s a precedent for using restraining orders to keep sex offenders offline. Take your pick of Daily Telegraph, Reuters or Mashable coverage. The official report‘s online (pdf format).
Other proposals in the report included setting up a government fund to cover the costs of security at synagogues and providing guidance for teachers on handling the Middle East conflict in the classroom.
2. Israel to demolish illegal EU-built structures in West Bank.
While the EU has not denied providing construction aid, it categorizes it as construction for humanitarian and public purposes.
3. AFP picked up on Hamas recruiting, training, and brainwashing kids for junior jihad. Notably, this is the first report on the kiddy corps I can think of with “critical” quotes from the non-governmental organizations.
But local human rights groups are accusing Hamas of exploiting children for political purposes.
“We are not disputing the right of an occupied people to resist, but it must be done by adults, not children,” one human rights activist told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The camps are making young people aggressive instead of educating them and teaching them to abide by the law,” the activist said.
4. What Universities Can Learn From Israel’s Status on Campus: The status of Israel on campus serves as a warning of encroaching dogmatism and lack of room for diversity of thought, argues Professor Emerita Cherryl Smith in a special guest post.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the principal leader of the Church of England, publicly admonished Twitter and Facebook to work harder to keep anti-Semitic posts, graphics and videos off their social media platforms. The Times of London writes:
The archbishop, who has previously waged war on payday lenders, said that he had been shown “utterly nauseating” online material that “would have fitted very nicely into 1930s Germany”. Companies must take down such posts immediately, he said . . .
“To put on Twitter a photograph of someone on a bar of soap because they’re Jewish, that is so disgusting they shouldn’t allow it to go up. They should remove it at once. And stop the account of anyone who’s doing that. It would mean monitoring but there’s the software to do it.”
• The Church of England took the unusual step of banning Rev. Stephen Sizer from using social media or speaking out on Mideast issues for six months. This comes days after the vicar posted on Facebook a link to an article entitled “9/11 Israel did it.” Judging from this church statement, Sizer apparently agreed to the ban rather than be defrocked. The Daily Telegraph adds that Rev. Sizer doesn’t have a very good relationship with the Jewish community:
The Rev Stephen Sizer, who has a long history of disputes with Jewish community leaders over blog postings and other online activities voicing his strident views on Israel and Zionism.
Last year he infuriated Jewish community leaders by taking part in a conference in Iran which was dubbed an “anti-Semitic hate-fest”.
• Roger Waters tried and failed to convince Alan Parsons to cancel this week’s Tel Aviv gig.
• Bureaucracy is as bureaucracy does. Reporter Ben Lynfield‘s having trouble registering his daughter with the US consulate. American ex-pats who hope to one day register their kids’ passports to say “Jerusalem, Israel” can surely commiserate. There, there, Ben.
Commentary/Analysis
• Over at The Daily Beast, David Keyes unloads on Mahmoud Abbas and his lousy human rights records.
Decades of propping up Palestinian dictators from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas have not solved the problem of radicalism—they’ve actually strengthened it. An unelected strongman like Abbas will not defeat extremism by investigating cartoonists, jailing critics and censoring the Internet . . .
Tyrants that stifle dissent are not moderates. The free world should stop pretending that they are. Giving a pass to Palestinian dictatorship serves no one—least of all the Palestinians.
• Worth reading: The return of Fatah-sponsored terrorism
• Yemen falls to Iran in regional proxy war.
• The ISIS threat is bringing Jordan and Egypt closer to Israel, points out Amos Harel.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Anthony Cordesman (Iran uses Israel to distract from its Persian Gulf goals), and a New York Daily News staff-ed (UN-acceptable bias as anti-Israel fanatic is bounced from the probe).
Featured image: CC BY Jon S via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; parliament CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Johan Lindstrom ;archbishop CC BY-NC-ND flickr/International Monetary Fund; Abbas via YouTube/Charlie Rose
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
