Today’s Top Stories
1. In Nablus, Palestinian rioters torched Joseph’s Tomb Thursday night, severely damaging the compound. Nobody was injured. Take your pick of Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, YNet, and Times of Israel coverage.
On Saturday night, the IDF was forced to extract a group of Jews from the compound. Some 30 Jews from the Breslov chassidic sect made an uncoordinated visit to the site and PA police started a violent confrontation. More on that at the Times of Israel.
2. France is drafting a plan to deploy international observers to the Temple Mount. Israel and the US are working against the proposal. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are pushing a proposal in UNESCO that would associate the Western Wall as part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. YNet, saw a copy of that proposal.
3. On Friday, a Palestinian posing as a journalist stabbed an IDF soldier. The Palestinian, identified by AP as Eyad Awawdeh, was wearing a flak jacket that said “press” and carried a camera while was mixing with other reporters, when he charged the soldier. Other soldiers on the scene shot and killed the terrorist. The soldier was moderately wounded.
The Foreign Press Association and Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the attack. More at the Jerusalem Post.
4. Headline Abuse Continues as Israel Portrayed as Aggressor: Headlines misrepresent weekend’s Palestinian terror attacks.
5. CNN: Joseph’s Tomb ‘Catches Fire’: Seemingly all by itself.
6. NBC News Bias Exposed: You know there’s a problem when an anchor has to correct an eyewitness correspondent on live TV.
7. Standing Up for Israel: Bias in the Media and How You Can Make an Impact: HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams will be speaking in Boston area tomorrow evening, at the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore. Come and learn how you can make a difference.
Address: 4 Community Road, Marblehead
When: Monday, October 19, 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
For more info: Click here
Israel and the Intifada
• There were five Palestinian stabbing attacks on Saturday, three of which were in Hebron (including the fake journalist attack noted above). In the first, a Palestinian who was stopped by Border Police for acting suspiciously stabbed and lightly wounded one of the officers. In the second attack, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man visiting town. Using his own personal firearm, the Israeli shot and killed his assailant. The third attack took place at an IDF checkpoint.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian who tried to stab an Israeli in the Armon HaNetziv neighborhood was shot and killed. More on all the attacks at the Jerusalem Post.
In the fifth attack, a Palestinian stabbed a soldier at the Kalandiya checkpoint.
• The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, calls for more attacks against Israel.
• Hoping to ease tensions, Kerry to meet with Netanyahu and Abbas this week.
• Two alleged collaborators sentenced to death in Gaza.
• When the editor on duty is A) too lazy to keep track of a flurry of breaking attacks, B) unwilling to write a headline that assigns responsibility, or C) loath to challenge long-standing spoon-fed narratives, the result is meaningless drivel. Like this header from National Public Radio.
• UN officials inciting murder of Jews, call to “stab Zionist dogs.”
• The Jerusalem Post takes a closer look at the Hashtag War on Twitter.
• Why do Palestinians deny even documented terror attacks on Jews? Is it a case of dueling narratives, wishful thinking, or scapegoating? The Times of Israel looks at what Palestinians are saying about a number of stabbing attacks caught on film. Benny Avni weighs in on the same question.
• Fascinating: Police woman Maya Stolero, whose father, Alexander Levlovitz was killed in a stone-throwing attack last month, saved the life of another Palestinian stabber. Stolero told the Washington Post:
“At that moment, I put my personal pain and views aside and drew on my training as a security official and on the values I was brought up with,” she said in an interview at her home in Maale Adumim, a Jewish settlement near Jerusalem, on Thursday.
For Stolero, a mother of three, Thursday was a difficult day. It was exactly 30 days since her father was buried, a traditional Jewish mourning day for the newly deceased. It was also the first court appearance for five Palestinian youths accused by Israel of pelting her father’s car with rocks, causing him to swerve across the road, hit an electrical pole and be fatally injured.
• Israel to cut off PA payments to imprisoned terrorists.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chided BBC reporter Lyse Doucet after she asked if Israel was ready to resume peace talks with the Palestinians.
Are we living on the same planet, Lyse? I’ve been calling day in, day out, in every forum, in the United Nations, in the US Congress, in Israel . . . I’ve called on President Abbas to resume unconditional negotiations immediately. Right now, as we speak, we can meet. I have no problem with that . . . The point of my statement is simple. I’m willing to meet him, he’s not willing to meet me. And you ask me about the resumption of negotiations? Come on, get with the program.
• Ambassador Ron Dermer discussed the situation with Andrea Mitchell Reports, Morning Joe, CNN, Sean Hannity and Bianna Golodryga of Yahoo News.
Other Israeli officials speaking out were Ambassador Danny Danon, who gave his first press briefing at the UN, cabinet ministers Gilad Erdan (op-ed in The Guardian), Naftali Bennett on BBC, and also Amit Heumann, an Israeli legal advisor addressing the UN on the rule of law. I’m embedding Dermer on Yahoo — it was the wide-ranging of the bunch.
Mideast Matters
• Iranian underground missile bases enable ‘surprise launches‘.
• Jerusalem and Moscow set up a hotline to avoid aerial clashes over Syria. According to Arab media reports picked up by YNet, Israeli jets flying near the Syrian-Lebanese border were forced to turn back after a confrontation with Russian aircraft two weeks ago.
• Writing in Politico, former State Dept. official Fred Hof describes coming oh-so-close to bringing Israel and Syria to peace talks. But then the civil war broke out.
According to Hof, Bashar Assad was willing to break out of Iran’s orbit in order to get back the Golan, and Bibi was receptive to the possibilities. Hof admits misreading Assad, and is critical of the Obama administration’s handling of Syria.
• The UN will deploy peacekeepers to protect UNESCO heritage sites from Islamic State.
Around the World
• Dutch lawmakers are considering extra protection for Israeli tourists. The move comes in response to a Dutch Muslim’s call on Facebook to “totally smite down Israeli tourists.”
• A London Jew leaving a synagogue had his car window smashed by an unidentified man who said, “We need to kill all Jews.”
• Argentine court requested the arrest of a Hezbollah member in 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. The attack, by a suicide bomber driving an explosive-laden pickup truck, killed 29 people and injured 242 others. Haaretz reports that the warrant was based on Israeli intelligence.
Commentary/Analysis
• Is this Wall St. Journal staff-ed (click via Google News) calling for drone strikes on Palestinians inciting violence in mosques, TV, and social media?
Promoting mass murder in the age of social-media jihad is more than a thought crime. Recall that President Obama ordered a strike on terrorist-inciting Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.
• Worth reading: Judith Miller slams biased press coverage of the intifada.
• Israeli Arab journalist Lucy Aharish blasted Israel Arab leaders for fanning the intifada’s flames.
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend. . .
– Donniel Hartman: My gun and I
– Jeffrey Goldberg: The paranoid, supremacist roots of the ‘Stabbing Intifada’
– Richard Kemp: Palestinian and Western leaders: Blood on their hands
– Melanie Phillips: Jewish blood stains many hands
– Maajid Nawaz: Inside the head of Israel/Palestine
– Eitan Haber: Abbas is deceiving us all
– Daniel Gordis: Palestinians fighting long war against Israel itself
• From the poison pen of Michael Ramirez, of Investor’s Business Daily:
– Avi Issacharoff: The ‘trickle intifada’ that just won’t stop
– Jonathan Tobin: Who’s desecrating holy place?
– Ian Tuttle: The media’s shameful, shameless bias against Israel
– Nadav Shragai: Muslims wish to turn back time
– Yaron Friedman: The ‘intifada of knives’: A fire with no fuel
– Alex Ryvchhin: Understanding the language of murder (click via Google News)
– Gary Rosenblatt: The wrong way to fight BDS
• See also staff-eds in the Washington Post, New York Times, and (hold your nose) Baltimore Sun.
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Holger Prothmann with additions by HonestReporting; Temple Mount via YouTube/History;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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