Today’s Top Stories
1. Here’s a fascinating BDS fail: The Spanish government paid Ariel University $100,000 in compensation for refusing to allow Ariel’s students to participate in an international competition six years ago and released a statement admitting it had discriminated against the students. YNet reports:
In March 2014, it said in an official statement that “Ariel University was treated unequally in comparison with other contest participants, allegedly because of the European Union’s position regarding the ‘occupied territories’ and without clarifying how the ‘occupied territories’ might affect the competition. Therefore, the decision to disqualify Ariel University has no legal basis and is unjustified. It is a violation of the fundamental right to equality included in Article 14 of the constitution, as the decision to disqualify the university contradicts Ariel University’s right to equality in the competition. The faulty decision-making regarding disqualifying Ariel University from the competition makes the decision null and void.”
Ariel University decided to accept the Spanish Housing Ministry’s proposal for compensation, bringing an end to the affair. University Chancellor Yigal Cohen-Orgad said resolution of the case proved that efforts by BDS can be overcome.
2. Yossi Cohen took over the Mossad today, returning to his old stomping grounds after serving a stint as National Security Advisor. Ronen Bergman and Haviv Rettig Gur weigh in on who Cohen is and what the appointment means. Don’t be surprised if the Mossad takes on handling delicate diplomacy with Arab states.
3. North Korea announced it detonated a mini-hydrogen bomb, which led to Israeli officials calling on the US to ensure Iran wasn’t involved. Tweet of the day is from Jeff Harrison.
Wonder how many #Iranians attended the #NorthKorea nuclear test yesterday…
— Jeff Harrison (@JeffHarrison) January 6, 2016
Israel and the Intifada
• Police expanded their manhunt for suspected Tel Aviv terrorist Nashat Milhem. Police believe he is now in “the Triangle,” a group of Israeli-Arab communities between Haifa and the Green Line.
• AFP: Palestinian Authority adrift after three months of unrest.
• Who would you say is the real “independent thinker” here? AP says it’s 20-year-old Maram Hassoneh, but I’d say it’s the brothers who stayed out of trouble.
She had memorized the entire Quran and cited religious and nationalistic motives for her desire to strike at Israelis. Unlike her younger brothers, who busied themselves with daily life, her father said Maram was an independent thinker who couldn’t be swayed from her convictions, even after serving six months in prison for another unsuccessful stabbing attempt on a soldier two years earlier.
• Anonymous Foreign Ministry officials told YNet they don’t realistically expect Brazil to approve former settler leader Dani Dayan as Israel’s ambassador to Brasilia. So what’s next?
Next week Brazil’s ambassador to Israel will reportedly be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a discussion, during which the gravity with which Israel views the non-approval of Dayan’s appointment will be made clear to him. A senior Foreign Ministry official said that only after all options have been exhausted, including initiating a phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, will they “calculate a new move”.
• Israel’s return of Palestinian bodies is fraught with emotion and politics, NPR reports.
• New Druze town approved near Tiberias.
• Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat appeared on BBC’s HARDtalk with Stephen Sackur. Here’s the full interview and here’s a short out-take with Stephen Sackur. If you’re outside the UK, you may need a VPN to watch.
• Globes: Israel’s Partner Communications to terminate Orange brand license agreement, closing the chapter on a big Orange mess.
• The video’s two hours, but if you watch it online, the PBS Frontline documentary, Netanyahu at War, was a well-made and fascinating look at Bibi and his relationship with President Obama. The Prime Minister’s Office accused Martin Indyk of fabricating a conversation he had with Netanyahu at Yitzahk Rabin’s funeral back in 1995, which was widely reported. Indyk was the US ambassador to Israel when Rabin was assassinated.
• 2 Israeli teens indicted in savage beating of Palestinian man.
Mideast Matters
• Monitors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) say they are investigating 11 chemical weapons attacks allegedly by Syrian army forces. Victims were exposed to sarin, or a sarin-like substance. The OPCW report also accuses Islamic State of using chemical weapons. BBC coverage.
• Sky News got an inside look at an Islamic State weapons lab and jihadi college for applied terror tech. We’re talking about home-made thermal batteries for surface-to-air missiles, allowing the jihadis to “recommission thousands of missiles assumed by western governments to have been redundant through old age,” and more.
The IS research and development team has produced fully working remote controlled cars to act as mobile bombs, while they have fitted the cars with “drivers”; mannequins with self-regulating thermostats to produce the heat signature of humans, allowing the car bombs to evade sophisticated scanning machines that protect military and government buildings in the West.
• Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE are blocking access to the Qatari news web site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. Government officials gave no reasons, but Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has been accused in the past of being a Muslim Brotherhood mouthpiece. More on the story at The Guardian.
• Bahrain uncovers ‘terrorist cell’ linked to Hezbullah, Iran
Around the World
• On the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher terror attacks, the magazine’s editor wondered why everybody talked about freedom of speech, but nobody questioned why Jews were targeted.
“We are so used to Jews being killed because they are Jewish,” Gerard Biard wrote. “This is an error, and not just on a human level. Because it’s the executioner who decides who is Jewish. Nov. 13 was the proof of that. On that day, the executioner showed us that he had decided we were all Jewish.”
• A JTA look at French aliyah finds that it’s not necessarily fueled by anti-Semitism:
But while violence against Jews is often identified as the major driver of French aliyah, many immigrants cite a broader mix of reasons for choosing to leave, including Zionist sentiment and alienation from an adamantly secularist society increasingly intolerant of the religiously devout . . .
Benhaim cites as evidence the fact that a majority of French Jewish emigres come from middle- and upper-class areas with little anti-Semitism. Only 15 percent are from poor areas with large Muslim populations and a high incidence of anti-Jewish attacks – a result, Benhaim said, of a reluctance to forego France’s generous social welfare benefits.
• Hungarian man faces €2500 fine or prison for Holocaust-denying Facebook rant.
Commentary/Analysis
• Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely got op-ed in Newsweek. Free speech online should not include incitement to violence.
Moreover, just as newsprint and broadcast media are expected to act responsibly by not serving as a means for inciting to violence, so too must social media platforms, and the companies which stand behind them, be bound by the same sense of social responsibility.
Innocent people are losing their lives in places as far afield as San Bernardino, Paris and Jerusalem because of violence driven by fanaticism and intolerance. Adherents of such fanaticism are resorting to different means for promoting it and for recruiting the terrorists who act on it.
#CharlieHebdo & the #Jews one year later. #antisemitism #terrorism https://t.co/MTduOnepfM pic.twitter.com/DTz82UmZgn
— Jonathan S. Tobin (@jonathans_tobin) January 6, 2016
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Alex Fishman: Is an armed intifada underway?
– Bassam Tawil: Lessons we Palestinians can learn
– Adam Milstein: Israeli-Americans can lead the fight against BDS
– Clifford May: Erdogan and the meaning of Hitler
– Dennis Ross: The Saudis are rightly concerned about Iran
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA Erio; Ariel U. CC BY-SA Michaeli; France CC BY-SA openDemocracy;
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