Today’s Top Stories
1. Hamas, for the first time, acknowledged holding two Israelis captive (Avraham Mengistu and an unidentified Bedouin, both wandered into Gaza), and holding the bodies of Lt. Hadar Goldin and Sgt. Oron Shaul (both killed fighting in Gaza during the 2014 war).
2. YNet: The UN censored an Israeli exhibit about Zionism, deeming displays on Zionism, Jerusalem and Israeli Arabs as ‘inappropriate.’
3. Reporter Ian Birrell — who contributed to last week’s Mail on Sunday story on UK aid money going to Palestinian terrorists — wrote a followup piece in the Jewish Chronicle.
The cash-strapped PA relies on foreign aid for nearly half its budget. Yet it is effectively giving £79m a year to prisoners, former prisoners and their families – although ministers admit this is a “serious burden” on finances.
PA officials defend the stipends. “It is not a crime to be fighting occupation,” said Amr Nasser, adviser to the minister of social affairs. “These people are heroes. We could be giving them much more money and it would not be enough.”
Nasser added that after independence, Palestinians would seek reparations from Britain for its historic role in encouraging Zionism. “You should pay us more money.”
Although DfID says the salaries are “social welfare” provisions for prisoners’ dependents, this is Orwellian use of language since they go only to people convicted of “acts of resistance”, not other criminals.
The Mail on Sunday also followed up this week with the story of Kay Wilson, a British national attacked by Palestinian terrorists “now each receiving at least £9,000 in ‘blood money’ every year with the help of UK aid.”
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
4. SUCCESS: Newsweek Corrects Charge That Israelis Shooting Dead Suspicious Palestinians: HR gets the correction after Newsweek falsely claimed that Israeli “security personnel have been shooting dead or injuring any Palestinian targeting or suspected of planning to target Israeli civilians.”
5. Is a “Helpless” Terrorist an Innocent Terrorist? A Times of London headline describes a neutralized Palestinian terrorist as a “helpless man.”
Israel and the Palestinians
• An Arab Israeli stabbed a woman in Rosh Ha’Ayin this afternoon. Also this afternoon, a Palestinian trying to stab soldiers at the Tapuach Junction in the northern West Bank was apprehended.
• The Israeli Navy sank a suspected smuggling boat off the coast of Gaza on Saturday night. This came one day after it was reported that Israel would ease restrictions on Gaza fishermen.
• Fed up with with unpaid Palestinian Authority bills, the Israel Electric Corporation cut in half the amount of electricity it supplies to Jericho. The Palestinian city won’t go in the dark though: it gets half its electricity from Jordan. The PA owes the Jerusalem District Electric Company NIS 1.7 billion ($451 million).
• According to the Jerusalem Post, politics is the reason Israel and the US haven’t completed a memorandum of understanding which will govern the next decade of US defense aid.
Netanyahu, the official explained, fears the White House may be seeking to quickly wrap up and sell the MOU as a public display of the president’s commitment to Israel’s security– in order to free him to pursue action at the UN.
Israel has not received assurances from the White House that Obama opposes such a resolution– a decision that is the president’s alone, the official noted.
• “A Palestinian teacher who won a $1 million prize for teaching nonviolence will keep her award even though her husband participated in a terror attack that killed six Israelis.”
• Fiamma Nirenstein and things that make me go hmmmm today . . .
Cabinet today confirmed 3 new ambassadors. @NirensteinF, who was announced to head @IsraelinItaly embassy 7 months ago, is not among them.
— Raphael Ahren (@RaphaelAhren) April 3, 2016
• Palestinian conversion requests rejected automatically, Israeli official says.
• The Media Line discussed Palestinian moves in the International Criminal Court with former chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.
• Say it ain’t so, Angela Merkel!
Germany said to spy on Israeli prime minister’s office
• Shimon Peres discussed BDS, terror, and more with YNet.
Around the World
• Egyptians are bent out of shape over the discovery of two stars of David engraved in a Roman-era Aswan temple.
• Belgium terror hotline operator fired for telling caller Israel doesn’t exist.
• BDS activists vandalize ad for ‘Open a Door to Israel’ Paris exhibit.
• French Health Minister Marisol Touraine is visiting Israeli hospitals and health care professionals to learn more about dealing with terror attacks.
• Vice News takes a closer look at why record numbers of Ukrainian Jews are fleeing to Israel.
• University of Chicago students are mobilizing against a suddenly launched BDS campaign on campus.
The campaign, sponsored by a group calling itself “UofC Divest,” is a local campus manifestation of the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Specifically, UofC Divest aims to persuade the student government to pass a resolution calling on the university to divest from certain companies allegedly “complicit in” or “profiting from” Israel’s “ongoing military occupation, apartheid, and other human rights violations in Palestine/Israel.”
• A former mayor resigned from the UK Labour Party over some ugly social media posts. The Jewish Chronicle reports that Khadim Hussain, who was once Lord Mayor of Bradford, suggested that Israel was secretly arming Islamic State, promoted a Facebook message viciously attacking Holocaust curriculum in UK schools.
But the Times of London reports the party also welcomed back blogger Tony Greenstein, who compares Israelis to Nazis.
• The British government has stopped providing funds to a prominent charity over its support for Israel Apartheid Week. The Daily Telegraph explains the falling out between War on Want and the Department for International Development (Dfid).
War on Want, whose logo appears on publicity materials for Israeli Apartheid Week and the meeting, has received £260,000 in funding from Dfid over the last two years.
The subsidy is doubly embarrassing because the Government has recently banned local authorities and other public bodies from implementing boycotts of Israel.
War on Want said in response it hasn’t sought government funding for years.
• Haaretz: A high-profile US hacker managed to deflect attacks on his site by somehow redirecting them to the Mossad’s web site. Why the Mossad, of all places?
Because they can look after themselves perfectly well. And the perps have no impact there.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Avi Issacharoff: ‘Lone wolf intifada’ is not driven by religion, seems to be waning
– Lawrence Franklin: Why are Christians leaving the Holy Land?
– Sever Plocker: UNHRC decision has serious implications
– Jonathan Tobin: Yes, anti-Zionism is anti-Semtiism
– Aaron David Miller: Benjamin Netanyahu’s staying power
– Larry Summers: Colleges have become hypersensitive to racial prejudice. Why not anti-Semitism?
– Andrew Silow-Carroll: The missing left: Where’s the support for liberal Zionists on campus?
– Melanie Phillips: Bewildered Britain still doesn’t get it
– Jonathan Arkush: Labour has a serious anti-Semitism problem – and Jeremy Corbyn is failing to fix it
– Shimon Koffler Fogel: Anti-Israel UN breaks even its own rules
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Presidents for life, no elections
Featured image: CC BY Roger H. Goun with additions by HonestReporting; parliament CC BY-NC Kotomi_; light CC BY-NC-ND elycefeliz;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
Before you comment on this article, please remind yourself of our Comments Policy. Any comments deemed to be in breach of the policy will be removed at the editor’s discretion.
