Today’s Top Stories
1. US sends ‘message’ to Abbas with $80 million aid cut.
2. Israel and Jordan “agreed” to 24/7 surveillance cameras on the Temple Mount. I qualified that word because, according to the Washington Post, the holy site’s already monitored that way:
However, it is unclear exactly how the proposed addition of more cameras would lessen tensions or change the situation in any meaningful way. Israeli authorities already operate more than 300 security cameras in the flash-point area, offering 24-hour monitoring capability.
Everything else that YNet says was agreed upon in the Netanyahu-Kerry talks merely reaffirms the site’s status quo. Palestinian leaders from the PA and Hamas, along with Jewish activists all oppose the idea for their own reasons.
3. The Wall St. Journal (via Google News) takes an in-depth look at how US-Israel ties frayed over the Iran deal, including spying, and withholding info. Did the IAF breach Iranian air space in a dry run for a strike?
The two countries, nursing a mutual distrust, each had something to hide. U.S. officials hoped to restrain Israel long enough to advance negotiations on a nuclear deal with Iran that the U.S. had launched in secret. U.S. officials saw Israel’s strike preparations as an attempt to usurp American foreign policy.
Instead of talking to each other, the allies kept their intentions secret.
Israel and the Intifada
• Weekend terror attacks continued: A Palestinian trying to stab policemen at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs was shot and killed this afternoon. This morning, a Palestinian stabbed and moderately injured an Israeli man at Gush Etzyon, south of Jerusalem. Yesterday, a Palestinian trying to stab an Israeli security guard at a checkpoint near Jenin was shot and killed in an attack caught on video.
On Friday afternoon, Palestinians firebombed an Israeli car driving near Beit El. The victims — a family of five, including a four-year-old girl — are hospitalized with various degrees of burns. Also on Friday, a Bedouin stabbed an IDF soldier at the security fence in Gush Etzyon on Friday. Turned out the soldier, who was lightly injured, is also a Bedouin (yes, it makes for a complex story).
• Israeli police have tied the Beersheva terrorist to Hamas. YNet reports:
A police investigation found photos of other Hamas operatives on al-Okbi’s phone, as well as photos of weapons, and other materials . . .
HaLevy said the many evidence collected, including the brother’s arrest, “clearly show that the terrorist punctiliously planned his actions over a long period of time.”
• The UN suspended a number of Palestinian aid workers over incitement claims after UN Watch released a report documenting UNRWA staff expressing support on social media for Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis. London’s Sunday Times picked up on the story too.
• Thumbs up to the New York Times for this look at Palestinian incitement — through music.
Inspired by this month’s wave of Palestinian attacks against Israeli Jews and deadly clashes with Israeli security forces, musicians in the occupied West Bank and beyond have produced scores of militaristic, often violent tunes. Published and shared on YouTube and Facebook, they form something of an intifada soundtrack, illustrated by videos that include gritty clips from fresh events.
“Stab the Zionist and say God is great,” declares one, a reference to the spate of knife attacks since Oct. 1. “Let the knives stab your enemy,” says another. A third is called “Continue the Intifada” and comes with a YouTube warning — the video shows the Palestinian woman who pulled a knife at an Afula bus station surrounded by Israeli soldiers pointing guns.
“Resist and carry your guns,” the song urges. “Say hello to being a martyr.”
The Gray Lady’s report embeds and links to plenty of examples — a far cry from AP‘s “he said she said” coverage.
• Memri recently took note of this video of a masked man in a PA security services uniform wordlessly demonstrating lethal stabbing methods. After several days, I see the video’s still on YouTube. Inciting people to kill Jews is bad enough, but by teaching people how do that is vile. In my book, YouTube’s making itself complicit in these terror attacks.
• An Israel injured in last year’s Har Nof synagogue massacre died and was laid to rest last night. Rabbi Chaim Yechiel (Howard) Rothman, a 55-year-old Canadian-Israeli, was 55.
Rothman, who had been in a coma since the attack, is survived by his wife and 11 children. Four other worshippers and a responding police officer were also killed.
• As violence strains co-existence, Jerusalem hospitals and universities try to stay above the fray, reports The Media Line.
• Worth reading: Amid the violence, Arab Israeli newscaster Lucy Aharish keeps on smiling.
• The mufti planned to build a crematorium in Dotan Valley.
• France’s high court confirmed the conviction of BDS activists, after a lower court found them guilty of engaging in incitement and discrimination. JTA coverage.
• Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s made some serious buzz for signing a letter denouncing cultural boycotts of Israel. Very worth reading: Maajid Nawaz, a British activist, author, and politician, explains why he signed the letter.
Around the World
• For a window into the thinking of the (secular) Free Syrian Army, Boaz Bismuth discussed Israel and the uprising with one of the group’s “key figures,” who says “If Israel decides to abandon Assad, he is finished.” If only it was that easy . . .
“I believe Assad is still in power because Western powers are not convinced that Israel really wants to see a Syria without Assad. You are afraid of what will be the day after Assad falls. Don’t be afraid. Let him go, cut him loose. Assad’s fall will eliminate the link in the chain that ties Iran with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Not only would you be rid of an enemy, but you would also weaken two others.”
• An Israeli Arab man paraglided into Syria to join one of the rebel groups. It’s not clear which group he was planning to join up with. Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wants to revoke the man’s citizenship.
• An Israeli journalist is under fire from his European counterparts for exposing extent of French anti-Semitism. While we’re talking about France, three Jews were injured in a stabbing attack outside a Marseilles synagogue on Saturday morning, and pro-Israel vigilantes attacked AFP’s offices in Paris.
Commentary/Analysis
• Tweet of the day, from Gidon Shaviv:
• At a time when Israelis are being stabbed in the streets, progressive “lifelong Zionists” encouraging people to boycott Israel is awfully low. And yet that’s what Professors Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl do in this Washington Post op-ed that goes beyond only boycotting settlements.
Levitsky and Weyl don’t understand that, as David Horovitz recently articulated, this intifada isn’t against occupation, it’s against Israel itself.
For supporters of Israel like us, all viable forms of pressure are painful. The only tools that could plausibly shape Israeli strategic calculations are a withdrawal of U.S. aid and diplomatic support, and boycotts of and divestitures from the Israeli economy. Boycotting only goods produced in settlements would not have sufficient impact to induce Israelis to rethink the status quo.
It is thus, reluctantly but resolutely, that we are refusing to travel to Israel, boycotting products produced there and calling on our universities to divest and our elected representatives to withdraw aid to Israel.
• Staff-eds in the New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald weighed in on Netanyahu’s comments about the Holocaust and the Mufti’s role in it. So did Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles.
• The Irish Independent‘s John Costello describes “fear and loathing” in Tel Aviv amid the latest stabbings as he gets ready for his wedding in two weeks.
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend . . .
– Bernard-Henri Lévy: Things we need to stop hearing about the ‘Stabbing Intifada’
– Andrew Bolt: How dare Jews defend themselves?
– Avi Issacharoff: Scowl, you’re on Kerry’s camera
– Bassam Tawil: Palestinian jihad: Lies, lies and more lies
– Aaron David Miller: 5 inconvenient truths about Israeli-Palestinian violence
– Lyn Julius: Bibi’s critics must not commit ‘Mufti denial’
– Benjamin Weinthal: Iran’s hostage-taking of Americans shows it can’t be housebroken
– Guy Bechor: The pornography of terror on Israeli media
– Amir Taheri: The ayatollah dreamed of Pax Americana’s end, Obama delivers it
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Bob Vonderau with additions by HonestReporting; jet CC BY-NC flickr/Israel Defense Forces; Rowling CC BY-NC flickr/PlayStation Europe;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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