Today’s Top Stories
1. Jordanian stability is on the media’s mind today:
– Israeli envoy to Jordan worried about kingdom’s increasing instability
– Unraveling Jordan‘s hangings
– Jordanian who killed 7 Israeli schoolgirls in 1997 set for release
– Israel-Jordan gas trade portends brighter future in Middle East
– Jordan at the precipice
2. Jewish community centers and other institutions in the US and Canada were hit with another wave of hoax bomb threats yesterday. All 100 US Senators signed an open letter to the Trump administration demanding quick action.
Last, but not least, CNN rounds up what’s known about the threatening calls.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
3. British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson is visiting Israel and the PA. President Reuven Rivlin used the occasion to invite the royal family to visit Israel for the centennial of the Balfour Declaration. Meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Johnson reiterated UK support for the two solution.
When this roundup was published, Johnson was due to return to Jerusalem for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The royal cold shoulder is well-known, but in recent months, UK Jewish leaders have been pushing the British Foreign Office. Last November, Israeli media reports suggested that a visit could be billed as a commemoration of the 1917 Battle of Jerusalem, when Gen. Edmund Allenby captured the city from the Ottomans.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Twitter account was disabled after posting some tweets that were way too cozy with Hamas, tsk.
• A Palestinian hitchhiker stabbed an Israeli man who picked him up near Jerusalem on Tuesday. Police haven’t determined if the attack was motivated by terror or crime.
• Israeli forces uncovered a weapons manufacturing cell in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus.
• The Jerusalem Post takes a closer look at the Knesset’s new law banning boycott supporters from entering Israel and how it will work.
• Is there a “budding symbiotic relationship” between Netanyahu and Trump?
• For International Women’s Day, the Indian Express discovered girl power at the Israeli embassy in New Delhi.
Commentary/Analysis
• I’m impressed that on International Women’s Day, the New York Times gave an op-ed soapbox to Emily Shire, who asks if the feminist movement has room for Zionists.
After taking issue with certain points in the International Women’s Strike platform that calls for a “decolonization of Palestine” as part of “the beating heart of this new feminist movement,” Shire writes:
But my prime concern is not that people hold this view of Israel. Rather, I find it troubling that embracing such a view is considered an essential part of an event that is supposed to unite feminists. I am happy to debate Middle East politics or listen to critiques of Israeli policies. But why should criticism of Israel be key to feminism in 2017? . . .
More and more frequently, my identity as a Zionist places me in conflict with the feminist movement of 2017. I will remain a proud feminist, but I see no reason I should have to sacrifice my Zionism for the sake of my feminism.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Yossi Melman: The Wikileaks CIA disclosure a warning for Israeli intelligence
– Ely Karmon: Hamas’s grip on Gaza is the real strategic threat
– Brig. Gen. (res.) Dr. Meir Elran: Tunnels are not a strategic threat
– Zvi Bar’el: Palestinian President Abbas is not Israel’s partner – or Cairo’s
– Melanie Phillips: Activists are out to destroy Israel
– Vivian Bercovici: Humor on McGill University campus: ‘Punch a Zionist’
– Andrew Silow-Carroll: JCC bomb threats are weapons of fear
– David Futrelle: What a bomb threat suspect’s story reveals
Featured image: CC BY-ND x1klima; jet via Facebook/Jordan Armed Forces; Queen Elizabeth CC BY-NC Defence Images;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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