Today’s Top Stories
1. Eighty-three out of one hundred US Senators have signed a letter to President Obama urging an increase in military aid to Israel. The current package is $3 billion of credits that are used primarily to purchase military items from American defense contractors. An increase would be used to maintain Israel’s qualitative military advantage now that the lifting of sanctions on Iran enables Israel’s most powerful threat to modernize and increase its capabilities.
2. Two Palestinians attacked soldiers at a Jerusalem crossing. They were both neutralized by forces on the scene with no Israeli injuries. Coverage from Times of Israel.
3. Remember all the negative press when Israel tried to warn Palestinians in Gaza to flee a targeted building by firing an unarmed missile at the roof? The Independent didn’t like it and neither did this op-ed that appeared in the Huffington Post. Well, seems like the US is now using the same technique against Islamic State targets in Iraq. Let’s see if there is the same level of condemnation.
4. Journalist or Terrorist? Seems that when you are an active member of several terrorist groups, it is a bit hard to claim the protected status of a journalist. In the case of Omar Nazzal, the European Federation of Journalists doesn’t think so.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• The Palestinians often reject Israeli claims that they engage in “incitement.” But how else could one describe a children’s play, broadcast on Hamas TV, in which children are praised for killing Jews? Nothing really changes in Gaza. Coverage from the Jerusalem Post. Also, the father of a Palestinian terrorist was invited to speak at a school. Israel is investigating.
• Neither Israel nor the Palestinians will attend the Paris peace conference at the end of May. Some 20 countries and representatives of the EU and UN are expected to attend the meeting. The meeting will be based on the Saudi proposal (also called the Arab Initiative) that calls for an Israel withdrawal from all disputed territories, a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and Israel accepting all Palestinian refugees and their descendants prior to negotiations.
Around the World
• Naz Shah, an MP from the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, has stepped down as an aide to the shadow chancellor over a Facebook post in which she superimposed a map of Israel on the US and suggested that Israel should be moved to the United States. She wrote sarcastically that relocating Israel would be a “solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict,” and that it would allow Palestinians to “get their life and their land back.” Additional coverage in the Telegraph.
• There is controversy over the decision of a French news station to air a documentary on the Paris terror attacks which includes footage of a suicide bomber at the moment of attack. Some say that the media should withhold such shocking images while others say that the violence is something people need to see to understand. It’s a debate we have in Israel all the time after a terror attack.
• Iran is threatening to take the United States to the International Court of Justice in the Hague over a US Supreme Court decision that will allow victims of Iranian sponsored terrorism to collect court-ordered judgements from seized Iranian assets. Iran claims that doing so would amount to “theft.”
Mideast Matters
• One of the worst ideas under consideration for the future of war torn Syria is for Israel to transfer the Golan Heights to whichever terrorist group or government faction eventually emerges from the carnage. When Prime Minister Netanyahu shot the idea down, the UN Security Council was quick to respond. Here’s Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Dannon’s take: “(The Security Council’s meeting on Tuesday) completely ignores the reality in the Middle East. While thousands of people are being massacred in Syria, and millions of citizens have become refugees, the Security Council has chosen to focus on Israel — the only true democracy in the Middle East.”
Commentary/Analysis
• Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post writes that Freedom House has downgraded its assessment of Israel from “free” to “partly free.’ The move was based on the influence of the free newspaper Israel Hayom that is owned by Sheldon Adelson, a supporter of Prime Minister Netanyahu. The organization claims that the popular free paper is damaging to other media outlets. When asked whether it would be better if Israel banned the paper, a spokesman for Freedom House said that also would be a serious infringement on press freedom. So the very existence of a free news source makes Israel less free, according to “Freedom House.” I wonder if they are aware that most people get their news from free internet sites these days.
• John Hannah in Foreign Policy (HT to Israel Daily Alert): Credit where credit is due. The World owes Israel a huge debt of gratitude for discovering that Syria was building a nuclear reactor with North Korea’s help and then destroying it, years before the Syrian civil war.
• A new paper from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy looks at the Palestinian Authority’s messaging over the last year. Calls for a two-state solution are becoming scarcer and while Abbas is no longer openly praising terrorism, he is also not condemning it. The paper also shows a big disconnect between what the Abbas and PA officials say in English to the media and what they say in Arabic to the Palestinian people.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– JCPA: The Failures of the International Community in the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916-2016.
– The Hill: A discussion of potential Islamic State sleeper cells in Europe by former U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA patrickdevries2003 via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
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