Today’s Top Stories
1. Is Hezbollah responsible for an explosion outside the Beirut headquarters of a Lebanese bank? While Reuters reports that nobody has claimed responsibility, Lebanese officials don’t believe Islamic State is responsible, and Hezbollah hasn’t commented on the blast. Reportedly, BLOM Bank was particularly aggressive against Hezbollah’s accounts, which the US Treasury Department is sanctioning.
Lebanese banks are complying with the sanctions. Notably, NOW Lebanon picked up on an Iranian report harshly criticizing Lebanese banks for freezing Hezbollah’s accounts, darkly warning, “the confrontation between Hezbollah and the banks has become almost inevitable.”
2. A British foreign aid project hoping to promote Palestinian nation-building “has instead encouraged terrorism and led to an increase in violence,” the Daily Telegraph reports:
The Department for International Development (DFID)’s £156.4 million grant providing financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) led to civil servants being “more likely” to commit acts of terrorism, an independent evaluation suggested.
An official report found that the five-year project encouraged public sector employees to engage in “active conflict” since their salaries were paid to their families even if they were convicted and imprisoned for criminal acts, including terrorism.
On completing jail sentences, civil servants were able to return to their jobs which had been “kept open when they return from detention”, and continue to draw a salary funded by the UK taxpayer.
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3. Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon was elected to chair the UN’s legal committee, which oversees issues of international law. The post is largely procedural, but it’s the first time Israel has ever been chosen to lead one of the UN’s six permanent committees. The Palestinians are predictably angry. Take your pick of Times of Israel or Reuters coverage.
The other five permanent committees deal with economic issues, disarmament, decolonization, human rights, and the UN budget.
4. AFP/Getty Images Blames Israel For Surviving 1967 War: Caption writers display gross ignorance of history.
5. HR’s managing editor, Simon Plosker and other media watchdogs discussed coverage of the Tel Aviv terror attack with The Algemeiner.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby was forced to cancel a visit to Ramallah, reportedly because Israel refused to let him fly by helicopter directly from Amman. Palestinian sources told Haaretz that Israel insisted that Elaraby arrive by the Allenby Bridge.
• Israel reopened Palestinian crossings that had been closed after last week’s Tel Aviv terror attack.
• Wow. Associated Press woke up:
• Hamas test-fired 30 rockets on Friday.
• It’s well-known that Palestinians are using home-made guns known as “Carlos” in terror attacks. This Daily Telegraph snippet nails the significance:
The Carl Gustav also empowers “lone wolf” attackers who do not have the backing of a major armed group like Hamas or Fatah’s Al-Aqsa brigades. Whereas in the past gunmen depended on an organised cell to provide them with arms they can now build or buy their own weapons with relative ease.
More on their exploding sales at YNet.
• Israel may be eager to wrap up a memorandum of understanding with the US after all. The MOU will govern a decade of US military aid to Israel; till now, Prime Minister Netanyahu sought to finalize it with the next US president, but the Jerusalem Post reports Israeli officials now apparently prefer dealing with President Obama:
According to this reasoning, Obama is a progressive president and, as such, if he signs the deal it would be tantamount to buy-in from a wider spectrum of Americans.
If presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wins in November and she signs the deal, she could come under fire from the liberal wing of her party – the Bernie Sanders wing – for giving Israel too much.
If the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump wins, this could be seen as an over-generous gift to Israel from the Republicans.
• Support for UNESCO resolution ignoring Jewish ties to Temple Mount was an “error,” says new Brazilian President.
• Egyptian power lines resume electricity supply to southern Gaza.
• The UN Security Council condemned the Tel Aviv shooting. It was the first time since the wave of Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks began in September that the Council officially criticized the terror attacks.
• Evergreen headline:
UN says Israel is primary cause of Palestinian suffering
• It’s clear that AFP needs to work on its boilerplate explanation of Israel’s Gaza blockade. Israel blockaded the Strip after Hamas seized control of Gaza . . .
Residents have lived under a punitive Israeli blockade imposed 10 years ago and their options are further limited by Egypt, which has largely kept its border with Gaza closed since 2013.
Around the World
• Orlando massacre casts light on flaws in Jewish institutional security.
• Jessica Schulberg of the Huffington Post takes a closer look at Israeli gun laws in light of the Orlando tragedy.
There’s no right to bear arms in Israel, and the death count in recent terror attacks is much lower than in terror-inspired U.S. mass murders.
• Glasgow University’s Palestine Society is under investigation over a Facebook post justifying last week’s Tel Aviv terror attack.
• Canadian court awards Iran’s non-diplomatic assets to terror victims in $13-million case. The litigants were victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks sponsored by Tehran.
The ruling comes at an awkward time for the Liberal government, which is trying to re-establish diplomat ties with Iran and deal with the regime over the fate of a Montreal professor, Homa Hoodfar, held in the notorious Evin prison on unspecified charges.
• The Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) examines what New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive order against BDS means for the boycott movement’s campus activities in the Empire State. Not much, since the order doesn’t pertain to campus finances.
Alphonso David, Mr. Cuomo’s counsel, said the new executive order wouldn’t pertain to schools that heeded requests for divestment, but those that did so could violate existing state laws against discrimination. He also said student groups calling for their schools to divest from Israel wouldn’t be affected by the order.
• Canada’s post office halts delivery of Toronto-area anti-Semitic newspaper.
• Hezbollah’s moving “tons of cocaine” in Latin America and Europe in order to finance its terror operations, according to a Drug Enforcement Agency official.
• Italy’s Parliament approves bill making spreading Holocaust denial illegal.
• An Italian newspaper’s under fire for “distributing free copies of an annotated version of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” with a paid supplement to Saturday’s edition.” More on the story at Reuters.
• In India, efforts to boycott Israeli dates fizzled. Loved these man-on-the-street quotes in the New Indian Express (via IsraellyCool):
Meanwhile, buyers of dates from Karachi Bakery are unperturbed by the boycott call. “Dates are made by Allah and grow on trees. It doesn’t matter which country they are grown in. This is a mischief by a handful of politicians, who want to get political mileage during this time. Next time, they may ask to boycott Irani dates alleging that they are grown by Shias,” said Md Sajid of Afzalgunj, a regular buyer of dates from Karachi Bakery.
“If they want to boycott Israel, why don’t they boycott all their products, including medicines and the ventilators in hospitals? Many medicines manufactured by Israel are used by Hyderabadi Muslims. Where does hatred go then? Is it selective as per our comfort? Islam doesn’t preach hatred sahab,” said Yusuf Ismail, a resident of Fateh Darwaza of Old City.
• A poll found that one-third of Hungarians shares the most widespread anti-Semitic beliefs “to some degree.”
• Fox Sports reporter Emily Austen was canned for an anti-Semitic and racist rant during a live video broadcast on Facebook. The broadcast itself wasn’t affiliated with Fox.
• At graduation party, Dutch teens sing about burning Jews.
Commentary/Analysis
• Orlando’s on my mind.
– David Harris: 3 lessons from Orlando
– Yossi Melman: Like Paris and Brussels, Orlando massacre was preventable
– David Horovitz: Terrorism: Stop the mud-slinging, fight the war
– Amos Harel: Terrorists have changed the rules of hostage-taking
– Yaakov Katz: Defining the enemy
• New York Governor Andrew Cuomo took to the Washington Post op-ed section to explain his opposition to the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.
Indeed, a new front has opened in the fight against Israel’s existence. Just as the U.S.-Israel relationship has developed a robust and burgeoning commercial dimension, the threats against Israel have acquired one. There are those who seek to weaken and undermine Israel through the politics of discrimination, hatred and fear.
New York will not tolerate this new brand of warfare. New York stands with Israel because we are Israel and Israel is us. Our values — freedom, democracy, liberty and the pursuit of peace — are collective, as is our drive to achieve them.
Other papers giving op-ed soapboxes on the issue included the New York Daily News (Professor Eugene Kontorovich supporting Cuomo), New York Times (Daniel Sieradski of Progressive Jews PAC opposing Cuomo), and Crain’s Chicago Business (Brian Balthaser of Jewish Voices for Peace).
• Was Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow a failure? A prominent Pravda columnist who thinks so caught the attention of Globes.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Martin Kramer: Israel and the post-American Middle East: Why the status quo is sustainable
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Who is threatening Israeli journalists and why?
– Burak Bekdil: Backstage at Turkey’s shotgun wedding with Israel
– Jonathan Schanzer: Hamas still finds harbor in Turkey
– Norman Bailey: The other reason Saudi Arabia needs Israel
– Aaron David Miller: The unhappy new normal in the Middle East
– Andrew Peek: It’s no time for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal
– Spengler: How anti-Semitism became respectable again
– Benjamin Weinthal: Should there be a new push to outlaw Hezbollah in the EU?
– Smadar Perry: Strangling Nasrallah
– Eyal Zisser: 35 years since Osirak
– George Will: In Britain, anti-Semitism endures
Featured image: CC0 Thong Vo via Unsplash with additions by HonestReporting; parliament CC BY-NC Kotomi_; Trump CC BY-SA Michael Vadon; Obama via YouTube/BBC News; Clinton via YouTube/CNN; Columbia CC BY-SA InSapphoWeTrust;Hyderabad CC BY-NC-ND Rajesh_India; typewriter CC BY-NC-ND newelly54;
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