Today’s Top Stories
1. While the White House’s Ben Rhodes insisted the US merely abstained from UNSC resolution 2334, Israeli officials said they had firm evidence that the US actively pushed the resolution. Cabinet minister Zev Elkin told the Jerusalem Post that Ukraine originally intended to abstain, but that changed after Vice President Joe Biden called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Biden’s office denied the story.
Ambassador Ron Dermer told CNN and MSNBC that Israel would also present its evidence to the incoming Trump administration after the inauguration “through the appropriate channels.”
Strengthening the claims that the US was more hands-on than is letting on, Wall St. Journal editor Bret Stephens (click via Google News) links to a November report in the New Zealand Herald describing a conversation between ecretary of State John Kerry and his NZ counterpart, Murray McCully. Indeed, New Zealand was one of the resolution 2334’s sponsors.
One of the closed-door discussions between United States Secretary of State John Kerry and the New Zealand Government today was a potential resolution by the United Nations Security Council on a two-state solution for the Israel – Palestinian conflict.
After the talks, Foreign Minister Murray McCully even raised the possibility of the US or New Zealand sponsoring a resolution.
“It is a conversation we are engaged in deeply and we’ve spent some time talking to Secretary Kerry about where the US might go on this.
2. Other Israeli responses to the UN vote include construction of a new West Bank bypass road and Jerusalem city hall’s expected approval hundreds of residential units.
Israel is also expected to cancel aid to Angola, which voted for the resolution.
3. According to Israeli Hebrew-language media reports, the Hamas drone engineer murdered in Tunisia was working on underwater drones to attack Israeli offshore gas rigs. Legal Insurrection rounded up the related links.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Haaretz picked up HonestReporting’s efforts to have Australian BDS activist Antony Loewenstein’s Israeli press credentials revoked. Decent article, though I wonder why any organization professing to be pro-Israel is branded by Haaretz as “right-wing.” See our expose and followup.
• New ‘Facebook Law’ approved by Israeli ministers empowers court to force web platforms to remove incitement from pages. The Algemeiner explains that the law
aims to empower the Administrative Court, at the state’s request, to issue injunctions to Internet content providers, such as Facebook and Google, to remove incitement from their pages.
Such injunctions will be issued, according to the bill, when posts are deemed to be criminal or to imperil the safety of an individual Israeli, sector of society or the country as a whole.
• Bungled headlines of the day, courtesy the New York Times and Associated Press. You have to read the articles to find out Israel is expanding housing units in eastern Jerusalem, which is not the same thing as creating new settlements. (Later in the day, AP changed its header.)
The headline writers are definitely validating their 2016 Dishonest Reporting Award, which we announced just yesterday . . .
• Israeli security forces say they foiled 180 shooting attacks in the West Bank in 2016.
Around the World
• Anti-Israel activists at the U. of Maryland are demand the administration protect them against anti-Semitism allegations, and allow them to promote BDS ‘without fear of consequence.’ Sounds to me that what they really want is a free pass for anti-Semitic bigotry.
• Taiwanese high school principal resigns over Nazi-themed parade (?!)
Commentary/Analysis
• Over at today’s New York Times Room for Debate, talking heads are slugging it out over the question of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Robert Stearns and Amiad Cohen weigh in for the move, while Aaron David Mmiller and Gregory Khalil oppose.
• No shortage of commentary on UNSC resolution 2334.
– Benny Avni: Obama’s betrayal of Israel is an act of diplomatic war
– Mark Goldfeder: Supporting UN resolution was wrong as a matter of law
– Alan Dershowitz: Obama pulls a bait-and-switch on Security Council vote
– Boaz Bismuth: Taking the gloves off
– David Horovitz: Netanyahu goes to war with the world
– Michael Wilner: US consistent against settlements — and against UN as appropriate venue
– Amb. Alan Baker: A scandalous UN resolution
– Raphael Ahren: Why Netanyahu refuses to ‘turn the other cheek’
– David Harris: Do the Palestinians really want a state?
– Tania Hary: Security Council resolution leaves out Gaza
– John Bolton: Obama’s parting betrayal of Israel (click via Google News)
– Gidon Ben-Zvi: Short-circuiting Oslo
– Times of London (staff-ed): A vote against peace
– New York Daily News (staff-ed): UN resolution leads Palestine to think it can bypass talks with Israel
• For a sense of what Israel’s critics, see Gideon Levy, Rachel Shabi and Simon Tisdall.
Featured image: CC BY Christian Cable with modifications by HonestReporting; Kerry and McCully via US Dept. of State;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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