Today’s Top Stories
1. The PA arrested a Palestinian journalist over an exposé claiming the PA collaborated with Israeli security forces to arrest one of the gunmen involved in the murders of Eitam and Naama Henkin. According to the report aired on Nablus TV, Israeli security forces entered a Hebron hospital in November (it was caught on video) to nab Hamas terrorist Karam al-Masri.
According to the report, a member of the Hamas cell, Karam al-Masri, was injured in the attack and secretly admitted to a local hospital for medical treatment. Medical staff at the hospital, the report claimed, alerted the PA security apparatus to his presence, and the PA dispatched an investigative unit under the leadership of one Imad Kharraz.
Kharraz reportedly confiscated al-Masri’s mobile phone and placed sentries at the door of his room, in order to control access to him. Once his identity as one of the perpetrators of the attack was verified, Israel sent a special forces unit to the hospital to arrest him.
2. Is Russia arming Hezbollah?
3. A fire broke out last night in the Jerusalem offices of the left-wing Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem. According to YNet, fire department officials believe it was likely started by an electrical short circuit.
There were initial suspicions of arson because one of B’Tselem’s activists, Ezra Nawi, was recently recorded by the TV show, Uvda, saying he helps the Palestinian Authority track down Palestinians who sell land to Jews. The PA treats selling land to Jews as a capital offense.
“Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.” . . .
Nawi was also documented obtaining information from a Palestinian who believed Nawi was a Jew interested in purchasing land. Nawi is seen saying he intends to give that information to Palestinian security officials as well. According to Uvda, an activist with the human rights group B’Tselem helped Nawi set up the would-be seller in a sting operation in which the seller would be arrested.
Israel and the Intifada
• A Palestinian tried to stab an Israeli soldier near Jenin.
• A Tel Aviv cartoon exhibition commemorating the attack on Charlie Hebdo censored the works of two Israeli cartoonists — at the request of the French embassy, according to Israeli media reports. What happened to Vladik Sandler and Roy Friedler’s caricatures?
Sandler’s picture, which portrayed Muhammad as a nude model for the five cartoonists murdered in last year’s attack, was removed from the exhibit. Meanwhile, a sticker was placed over an image of Muhammad in Friedler’s picture of the cartoonists going up to heaven, only to find Muhammad waiting at reception. In the accompanying text, one of the cartoonists says: “Friends, I think we’re screwed.” . . .
Sandler wrote that although he does not usually enjoy drawing “provocative” and “callous” pictures, he felt that in this case, it was appropriate to draw the picture as a tribute to the murdered Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, whose magazine was specifically targeted due to its publication of cartoons featuring the prophet . . .
French Institute spokeswoman Ann Gollion told the NRG news site that the allegations were not true, and that concerns about space dictated which cartoons to display.
You can see the cartoons on Sandler’s Facebook page.
Around the World
• Belarus is “terminating the activities” of its mission in Israel after Israel announced the closing of its own embassy in Minsk. In a cost-cutting measure, Israel also shut down for now consulates in Philadelphia and Marseilles, an embassy in San Salvador, and the position of a “roving ambassador” for Caribbean countries.
Ex-foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who spearheaded the opening of the embassy in Minsk, “said the move would cause bureaucratic headaches for some 130,000 immigrants from Belarus in Israel.” Belarus said the decision to close its Israeli mission was based on reciprocity.
• Machete-wielding youth attacks Jews at Marseille synagogue
• More starvation deaths as aid convoys try to reach Madaya, the Syrian town besieged by Hezbollah.
Commentary/Analysis
• The New York Times gave op-ed space to the foreign minister of Iran, a country knee-deep in capital punishment, to decry a “reckless” Saudi execution.
This is a joke, right? @JZarif : Saudi Arabia’s Reckless Extremism https://t.co/UrZrhyYlgg
— Danielle Pletka (@dpletka) January 11, 2016
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Shmuel Rosner: An Israeli debate animated by anger and fear
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s pyromania
– Jonathan Tobin: Palestinians tell us what they want
– Times of London: French Jewry an increasing asset to British life (staff-ed)
Featured image: CC BY-NC Debabrata Ray; Minsk CC BY Rodrigo Diaz Lupanow;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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