Today’s Top Stories
1. Palestinians denounced UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for acknowledging Jewish ties to the Temple Mount. What does it say about the Palestinians that a comment like this should get their leaders in such a tizzy?
Speaking to Israel Radio on Friday, Guterres reportedly said that it is “completely clear that the Temple that the Romans destroyed in Jerusalem was a Jewish temple.”
2. The Knesset rescheduled its vote on the controversial “Regulation Bill” to tomorrow. The legislation would retroactively legalize around 4,000 housing units built on private Palestinian land in several West Bank locations. Worth watching: The Times of Israel‘s Haviv Rettig Gur explains what the Regulation Bill is and why it’s so contentious.
3. Israel fears citizens who fled Muslim lands may be banned by US. AFP reports Jerusalem is seeking clarifications from Washington about 140,000 nationals born in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya and Yemen.
The majority are over the age of 65 and many fled persecution. Their Israeli passports say where they were born.
The US Consulate in Jerusalem referred a question by AFP to the US State Department, which several hours after being asked to respond was still unable to clarify whether the ban includes Israeli Jews.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Gauging the mood of Israeli settlers, the Daily Telegraph visited Beit El.
Back in his home in the settlement of Efrat, Mr Revivi is still a little jetlagged but energised from his whirlwind trip to Trump’s Washington. When asked what his top priority was – building new homes, annexation of West Bank land, an end to talk of two states – he laughed at the idea the settler’s movement should narrow its ambitions to one policy.
“I don’t have a bucket list, I have a broad view of a better presence and a better future for all the people, living in coexistence” he said. “The sky is the limit.”
• Israel’s i24news to launch US channel based in New York.
The new U.S. channel, which will broadcast in English, is scheduled to launch on Feb. 13 and its first distribution partner is Altice USA. The channel will be initially be available on Altice USA’s Optimum TV, Channel 102, and on Suddenlink TV systems.
Around the World
• While Mexico demands an apology and its Jewish community is alarmed by Netanyahu’s support for Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, the Prime Minister refuses to apologize or walk back his tweet.
• White House: Trump’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement deliberately omitted Jews because others were killed too. Despite criticism from Jewish groups, the Trump administration has no regrets.
• A number of printers at Stanford University were hacked to print out anti-Semitic flyers. The Stanford Daily reports that police have not yet found any evidence connecting this to a recent wave of swastika graffiti on campus and Palo Alto.
• After coming across as an uninformed bigot in an interview yesterday, Baroness Jenny Tonge says she was “caught in a trap” and “interrogated” on a Jewish affairs show. Tonge, a fierce critic of Israel, was pressed by JTV’s Dr. Alan Mendoza on her views of the Mideast conflict and various statement’s she has made in the past. Watch the full interview or the condensed version.
Commentary/Analysis
• While everyone’s talking about travel bans, Frida Ghitis raises this point:
https://twitter.com/FridaGhitis/status/825828568706011136
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: Will Trump, court save Israel from international law suicide bill?
– Avi Issacharoff: Palestinians? What Palestinians?
– Seth Frantzman: Hamas admits anti-Semitism, why do so many whitewash it?
– Hillel Frisch, Yitzhak Sokoloff: Trump, the Mideast conflict, and the Jordanian option
– Dr. Reuven Berko: Hamas moves ever closer to Egypt
– Andrew Silow-Carroll: Why Trump’s universalizing of the Holocaust matters to the Jews
– Jeffrey Salkin: Donald Trump’s Holocaust aphasia
– John Podhoretz: The White House Holocaust horror
Featured image: CC BY Matthew G;
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