Today’s Top Stories
1. A Tel Aviv construction site collapsed, killing two people and injuring possibly as many as 27, with others still missing in the wreckage. Rescue efforts were complicated by the fact that the site was an underground parking garage. It’s believed the collapse was the result of a structural failure after a tractor drove across one of the garage’s upper levels.
See Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, YNet and Times of Israel coverage.
2. According to YNet, residents of the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood Kafr Aqab will get to vote in the Palestinian Authority’s municipal elections this October. Although Kafr Aqab is inside Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, the neighborhood lies outside the security barrier and receives services from the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Council. There’s another variable that has to make you rub your head in wonder
Third, though most of the neighborhood lies within east Jerusalem’s jurisdiction, a small part of it, housing several hundred residents, is on the Palestinian side, a fact that acts as a gateway for the entire neighborhood to participate in the elections.
Related reading on this political gray area between the city lines and security barrier: Razing a Racket.
3. Iran says the Syrian army and Hezbollah are gearing up a for a large-scale offensive against rebels in the Syrian Golan, opposite Israel. Will this mean a Hezbollah presence opposite Quneitra?
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
4. Telling Israel’s Story: HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams, along with Aviva Klompas and Arsen Ostrovsky, co-authored a Jerusalem Post op-ed.
Many of the movement’s supporters are not familiar with the BDS founders’ goals and financiers. If they were, perhaps they would be less inclined to champion a movement that impedes peace and is celebrated by the likes of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The upcoming school year will be further challenged by the impending 50-year anniversary of the Six Day War. Two divergent movements will undoubtedly emerge – one will celebrate half a century of a reunified Jerusalem and a second, more vocal group will spend the year denouncing half a century of Israeli “occupation.”
There are two competing narratives on campus and day by day, Israel’s champions are losing ground. The progressives accuse Israel of stifling equality, denying human rights and eroding democracy. The tragedy of these accusations is that nothing could be further from the truth.
5. Munich’s on my mind.
#OnThisDay Remembering the 11 Israeli athletes murdered by terrorists at 1972 #Munich #Olympics on 5 September pic.twitter.com/r5j8rxdpGw
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 5, 2016
Israel and the Palestinians
• In first, German Foreign Ministry admits the PA is likely paying terrorists’ families.
Following repeated queries by an opposition lawmaker, the Foreign Ministry in Berlin last week also acknowledged that funds for so-called “martyrs” and Palestinian prisoners sitting in Israeli jails for security-related offenses come not only from the Palestine Liberation Organization but partially from the PA’s own budget. . .
“There are Palestinian institutions that make payments to the families of those incarcerated by Israel and the families of those who were killed or wounded. Among them are also relatives of assailants,” reads a Foreign Ministry document from September 1, a copy of which was obtained by The Times of Israel.
The document goes on the explain that Palestinian prisoners get financial support from the PLO Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs because the PA ceased its own payments to prisoners after its Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs was dissolved two years ago. “The Federal Government is investigating indications that the Palestinian Authority in individual cases supported the PLO’s Commission for Detainees’ budget,” the document states.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted an invitation to visit Australia in 2017 from visiting Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. The Sydney Morning Herald notes that Netanyahu would be the first sitting Israeli prime minister to pay an official visit Down Under.
And in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Bishop discussed the peace process, Canberra’s investigation into World Vision money being funneled to Hamas, and Iran, among other issues. Asked about BDS, Bishop said:
“We see it as anti-Semitic, and we certainly condemn those who support it. We will always support a nation that believes in freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”
• The World Organization of the Scout Movement denies that the Jerusalem scout troop that honored a Palestinian terrorist is an affiliate of the international body. But Palestinian Media Watch refutes the WOSM.
• Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan is visiting Britain to discuss fighting BDS with government, law enforcement, and academic officials. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• A Palestinian trying to run over Border Policemen operating in the Shuafat refugee camp in eastern Jerusalem was shot and killed on Sunday night. A second Palestinian in the car was lightly injured.
If you’re looking for any context to this incident, don’t bother with AFP, whose boilerplate background suggests the death toll is nothing more than score card. You wouldn’t know that the majority of the Palestinians killed were carrying out stabbing, car-ramming or shooting attacks, or in clashes with Israeli security forces.
Violence has surged in the Palestinian Territories and Israel since October 2015, costing the lives of 223 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two Americans and one Eritrean and Sudanese respectively, according to a tally by AFP.
• Israel indicted a Gaza sporting goods merchant for smuggling diving equipment and other athletic gear to Hamas. More at YNet.
• Avi Dichter says Pass the popcorn.
MK @avidichter: More Hezbollah terrorists were killed in Syria than in clashes with Israel over 20 years. In Israel's view that's good news.
— Raphael Ahren (@RaphaelAhren) September 5, 2016
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Jackson Diehl: Obama to launch an 11th-hour Mideast gambit?
– Sever Plocker: The Iran deal, one year later
– Annika Hernroth-Rothstein: Backhanded advocacy
– Khaled Abu Toameh: The invisible (female) Palestinians
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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