Today’s Top Stories
1. 50 people were killed in Sinai terror attacks. Casualty figures that don’t distinguish between terrorists and their victims can imply a moral equivalence between terrorists and their victims, but in this case, Reuters says Egyptian officials haven’t offered any breakdown.
With clashes continuing, Israel closed its border crossings with both Egypt and Gaza.
2. Just one day after President Obama signed anti-BDS legislation into law, the State Department announced it will not protect settlements against boycotts. The legislation, according to spokesman John Kirby, “conflates” Israel and the “Israel-controlled territories.” The Times of Israel and Haaretz picked up. The latter writes:
Thus, the effort to strengthen the settlements, supported by AIPAC and other mainstream and right-wing groups and opposed by J-Street and organizations on the left, actually ends up weakening them. The attempt to blot out the differences between a boycott of Israel and of the territories actually highlights them. The boycott of settlements, in effect, has now been officially stamped “kosher” by the State Department.
But Eugene Kontorovich tweets that what’s done is done. (See also his background on the legislation.)
Related reading from HonestReporting: State Department Lashes Out Against Anti-BDS Law: By implying that boycotts of the West Bank should not fall under the anti-BDS legislation, the State Department statement may lead to more boycotts of the West Bank and a stronger BDS movement.
3. A victim of yesterday’s drive-by shooting terror attack, Malachi Rosenfeld, was laid to rest after succumbing to his wounds. Thousands of Israelis converged on Kochav HaShachar to pay their final respects to the 26-year-old Rosenfeld. His three friends also hurt in the attack, remain hospitalized.
4. CNN’s Blockade Against Accuracy: Sorry CNN, but the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza is legal under international law.
5. Is the UN Human Rights Council Obsessed with Israel? The New York Times doubts the UN Human Rights Council’s obsession with Israel. HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl clears the air.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli security busted a Hamas terror network in the West Bank. The Jerusalem Post reports the group received orders and money from a Qatar-based Hamas operative.
• Reuters: Islamic State threatened to topple Hamas in Gaza. How seriously should Israel regard the smack talk?
• In his latest move against political rivals, Mahmoud Abbas reportedly fired Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO’s number two man. This comes on the heels of Abbas freezing the assets of an NGO associated with former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
• Hamas shut down Gaza’s only cell phone provider, Jawwal, over charges of tax-dodging. According to UPI, cellular service in the strip may grind to a halt, but it’s not clear if or when it would come to that.
Jawwal is part of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Telecommunication Group (PalTel), which pays taxes to the PA. As Hamas is a designated terror organization, paying taxes to it could get Jawwal into legal hot water internationally.
• The United Church of Christ voted to divest its holdings in companies operating in the West Bank. The Cleveland-based liberal Protestant church has around 1.1 million members.
• Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar painted a rainbow flag on the security barrier only to have it literally whitewashed by Palestinians with more disapproving views on gay rights. Associated Press picked up on the story, comparing gay rights in Israel and the PA.
Around the World
• Iranian nuclear talks were extended to July 7. Will negotiators meet the new deadline?
• The number of Islamist operatives in Germany is rising, according to a the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
Hezbollah has 950 active operatives in the Federal Republic, and Hamas has 300. Germany has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. The Merkel administration along with the EU banned Hezbollah’s military wing in 2013, but allows its political wing to operate.
• The upstate New York school district of Pine Bush agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it didn’t respond to complaints of widespread anti-Semitic bullying and harassment.
The students said they were forced to endure anti-Semitic epithets and jokes about the Holocaust, including Nazi salutes, and to retrieve coins from dumpsters. They also said they were subject to physical violence.
School officials responded with “deliberate indifference,” according to the lawsuit.
• The neo-Nazi rally scheduled to be held in the London’s Jewish neighborhood of Golder’s Green this Saturday was moved by police order to central London. More at the Jewish Chronicle.
• The Jerusalem Post takes a closer look at Israel’s “pivot” eastward towards India and China.
Commentary/Analysis
• Worth reading: The Israeli-Druze ambassador to Brazil, Dr. Reda Mansour, got a YNet soapbox to clarify what the Israeli Druze community does and doesn’t want:
We don’t want a single Israeli soldier to set foot in Syria in order to save the Druze over there. We haven’t survived in the Middle East for 1,000 years thanks to external aid and we won’t start now . . .
The Druze don’t want Israel to open up the fence and take in hundreds of thousands of Syrian Druze either. You can rest assured that there won’t be hundreds of thousands of Druze refugees. Just like we didn’t flee Israel in 1948 in view of Palestinian gunmen’s daily attacks on our villages, and just like the Druze in Lebanon didn’t flee in the 1967 civil war after being stormed by militias and foreign armies, the Druze will not flee Suwayda. If they leave, it will be after tens of thousands are killed in battle, and they will return with a counterattack, and the majority of survivors will not move from their homes.
So what do we really want from the State of Israel and from our Jewish friends in it? First of all, we expect empathy. Showing understanding means, for example, halting the medical care being given in Israel to members of Jabhat al-Nusra (an organization affiliated with al-Qaeda), especially after they massacred 20 Druze people in cold blood.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– Raphael Ahren: Will UN Gaza resolution be totally anti-Israel or just mostly so?
– Danny Rubinstein: Third intifada? Not now
– Benny Avni: Arab allies looking anywhere but to America for friendship
– Daniel Gordis: What Americans could learn from Israel’s gun culture
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Ron Lute with additions by HonestReporting; Mansour via YouTube/Mosaico na TV;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
