Today’s Top Stories
1. Jordan signed a $10 billion deal with Noble Energy to buy natural gas from Israel’s offshore Leviathan gas field over the next 15 years.
2. According to Asharq al Awsat, Russia wants to literally empty Aleppo of its residents. Can you image the outrage if Israel was even reportedly interested in emptying out, say, Khan Younis?
Meanwhile, Jews from Aleppo in Israel are pained by city’s destruction.
3. Governor Jerry Brown of California signs anti-BDS bill into law.
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Israel and the Intifada
• Too little, too late: Khaled Mashaal admits Hamas made mistakes after taking over Gaza in 2006.
• Palestinian activists boycotted Facebook for two hours yesterday to protest the social media giant’s disabling of accounts promoting violence. Palestinians were urged to post on Twitter instead, where they used the hashtag #FBCensorsPalestine to aim their sling their vitriol at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.
We support #FBCensorsPalestine protest – anti-Israel nuts refusing to publish their venom on Facebook https://t.co/WzYIiNb0uf
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) September 25, 2016
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Donald Trump and with Hillary Clinton yesterday. The promises and praises were as glitzy as the obligatory grip-and-grin photos.
• Israel almost entirely halts citizenship approvals for East Jerusalemites, the Times of Israel reports.
• An IDF briefing for reporters painted a bleak picture of life in Gaza. Hamas is rebuilding its military and tunnel infrastructure, not the Strip while the IDF improves its subterranean tactics. Unemployment’s at 41 percent. And its not abnormal for Gazans to cross the border simply to get arrested. Times of Israel coverage.
Around the World
• A far-right Hungarian politician who discovered he’s Jewish is moving to Israel to help fight anti-Semitism. Four years ago, Csanad Szegedi, a member of the European Parliament and rising star in the ultra-nationalist Jobbik Party, before learning his grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. The Independent adds:
He refused to rule out participating in Israeli politics saying he followed it “closely” and had the “political bug” but had not joined any political party yet.
• Team Israel defeated Great Britain in the final game of the World Baseball Classic qualifier. “Israel advances to the World Baseball Classic, a quadrennial event modeled after soccer’s World Cup, and will play in South Korea in March.” Watch the highlights.
Commentary/Analysis
• A staff-ed in the Saudi Gazette (you read that right) urges Mahmoud Abbas not to dismiss Benjamin Netanyahu’s invitation to address the Knesset.
Netanyahu’s gesture was quickly rejected by the Palestinians as a “new gimmick” but the invitation is reminiscent of the one issued by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to visit Israel — and the rest is history.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Holidays, motivation and shaheeds
– Raphael Ahren: Meeting with candidates, Netanyahu leaves another enigma in his wake
– Zalman Shoval: The meetings on the sidelines
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas to Arab leaders: Go to Hell!
– Elliott Abrams: A candid speech from President Abbas
– Seth Frantzman: “I’m boycotting the occupation, but I support it”: The charade
– Alex Fishman: Hamas still operating in Turkey despite Israeli rapprochement
– Micah Halpern: ‘Allahu Akbar’
Image: CC BY Hamed Saber; Csanad via YouTube/HETI Tv;
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