Indian PM Visits Israel

Today’s Top Stories

1. Narendra Modi is set to become India’s first Prime Minister to visit Israel, 25 years after the countries established diplomatic relations.

The Indian premier, who referred to the “deep and centuries-old” connection between the two states, is to spend 3 days in Israel which will include a visit to Yad Vashem, a speech to 4000 Indian Jews, and a trip to Haifa to remember the fallen from World War One in which Indian troops fought as part of the British Empire. According to the Indian Embassy nearly 900 Indian soldiers are buried in cemeteries across Israel.

In an honor that is reserved to a select few, Prime Minister Netanyahu will be joining his guest “at many events during his visit as befits the leader of the largest democracy in the world.”

Talks will address a range of topics including security, defense, and agriculture while boosting economic ties and furthering people-to-people interactions will also be on the agenda.

A lot has been written about this historic moment, here are a few of our favorites:

• As a symbol of the collaboration between Israel and India, Benyamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi wrote a joint op-ed in the Times of India.
• Newsweek examines what the two countries hope to achieve by this visit: including security cooperation and support on the international stage.
• The Daily Mail raises an important lesson for all countries: that India’s years of support for Arab states (including by distancing itself from Israel) was not reciprocated nor rewarded.
• Thought Israelis were all white and European? Think again. Israel’s highly diverse population includes Indian Jews, and this visit holds a special meaning for that community.

2. Border police said they foiled a terror attack yesterday after finding a bag of knives, stun grenades and Molotov cocktail materials during the search of a Palestinian vehicle at a checkpoint near east Jerusalem. The international media loves to demonize Israel over the existence of checkpoints as in this Washington Post series we critiqued (in fairness to the Washington Post it is only one of many similar offenders). While such critiques focus on inconvenience to Palestinians, they almost never discuss the risk of violence and death to Israelis, nor the fact that the decisions to carry out these attacks are entirely in Palestinian control. Case-in-point: as of the writing of this IDNS, we have seen exactly no coverage at all of this incident in the international media. Is it any wonder that so many people don’t understand why checkpoints exist?

3. Speaking of anti-Israel resolutions, UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, is set to vote on yet another anti-Israel resolution: this time designating the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a holy site to Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, a world heritage site in danger and one which is within the “state of Palestine”.

UNESCO has been a platform for the promotion of anti-Israel rhetoric for quite some time now, criticized by the Director General of the UNESCO itself Irina Bokovo, US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, and by a number of UN Secretaries General including the recently elected Antonio Guterres.

Not to be outdone, HonestReporting has also spoken out on UNESCO in numerous articles, as well as in this catchy and shareable meme, as relevant now as when we first published it:

4. After persistent efforts by HonestReporting and HR followers, the Guardian appears to be following a new approach to writing about “Israel’s holiest site.”

Israel and the Palestinians

• The Israeli Labor Party election has finally taken place after having been postponed due to the Britney Spears concert in Tel Aviv. (Yes, you read that right!) The big winners: former Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and former Environment Protection Minister (then under the Kulanu Party) Avi Gabbay. The two will face off in another vote next Monday to see who will lead the party. In any case MK Isaac Herzog will be relinquishing his position as current party head.

• Israel’s recent efforts to establish connections with African states has not gone unnoticed by Palestinian leadership, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a speech to the 29th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:

The Israeli state of occupation’s efforts to participate in your regional conferences and organize continental conferences encourages it to continue its arrogance, occupy Palestine and deny the Palestinian people’s rights.

Isn’t it possible that not absolutely everything Israel ever does is about Palestinians?

Prime Minister Netanyahu visited Africa in 2016 and met with seven heads of state and did so again in June of this year when he addressed the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) summit in Liberia.

Most African states belong to the Non-Aligned Movement, which is a voting bloc within the UN, and have historically supported Palestinian causes and resolutions. However, Israel’s efforts seem to be paying off already: in June, 2016 Israel received 103 of 175 votes to be elected to head the UN Legal Committee, the first time Israel has been elected to chair one of the permanent UN committees. In another encouraging sign: though anti-Israel resolutions are still a fixture of the UN, they are passing by narrower margins every time, often garnering support from only, or almost only, Arab nations.

• The World Heritage Committee observed a moment of silence for victims of the Holocaust in Krakow, Poland just days before the 21 member body is to vote on a motion that would recognize the Tomb of the Patriarchs as a Palestinian site that is “in danger,” presumably under threat by Israel. Member states, led by Cuba, held a minute of silence for Palestinians, equating them with the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It is a dark irony that some of the worst chapters of the Holocaust took place a stone’s throw from the site of this event: at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Shama Hacohen, Israel’s envoy remained seated during the minute of silence for Palestinians, saying that the activity had made no effort to distinguish those Palestinians who had died as “terrorists” and as “martyrs” while carrying out deadly attacks.

Want to see the event for yourself? Take a look at this video, courtesy of UN Watch:

The World Heritage Committee, is examining inscription requests for 35 sites during its Krakow meeting, which began Sunday and ends July 12.

• Not all is bad in the world of international diplomacy as shown by Danny Danon’s guided tour around Israel alongside some of his fellow UN ambassadors: Australia, Estonia, Gabon, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Papua New Guinea, Poland and Togo. According to Danon, the purpose of the trip is:

To defeat the lies spread about our capital city at the UN, nothing is more important than for my fellow ambassadors to learn the truth about Jerusalem and see the beauty of this city firsthand.

The ambassadors, led by Danon, will have the opportunity to visit the Northern border, the southern region and Tel Aviv before meeting Netanyahu and other officials in Jerusalem. The delegation is also scheduled to travel to Ramallah, to meet with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

Mideast Matters

• Newsweek speculates on the possibility that Hezbollah, the Iranian-sponsored Lebanese terrorist organization which has been propping up the Assad regime, could potentially go to war with Israel, amid growing tensions.

While Hezbollah fighters have gained fighting experience and amassed a substantial arsenal of weapons it has also suffered losses and would find itself in a weak position to fight in Syria on one front, maintain power in Lebanon on an a second front and face Israeli forces in Southern Lebanon on a third one.

Hilal Khashan, a politics professor at the American University of Beirut confidently states:

If Israel wants to launch an all-out war, Hezbollah would stand no chance.

Nonetheless, Hezbollah remains the strongest sub-state actor in the world with a force of 20,000 fighters backed by an additional 25,000 reservists. The terror organization also possesses an estimated 120,000 – 150,000 missiles, more than most actual nations. Even if it is a foregone conclusion that Hezbollah would lose in such a conflict, Israel would likely pay a heavy price in both physical destruction and human life.

• Saleh al-Arouri, one of the most wanted Palestinian terrorists, believed by Israeli intelligence to have planned the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in the West Bank in the summer of 2014, has moved to Lebanon where he is being hosted and protected by Hezbollah. On June 5, Palestinian sources confirmed that Qatar — which is embroiled in a boycott by Saudi Arabia and four other Arab states — had asked several top Hamas officials to leave for Lebanon, Turkey and Malaysia. Hamas currently maintains its headquarters in Qatar. Is this an initial sign that the pressure on Qatar may put an end to its hosting of Hamas? Time will tell…

Commentary/Analysis

• Columnist Bari Weiss says in her New York Times op-ed, “I’m Glad the Dyke March Banned Jewish Stars.” To fill in a little context: last weekend, at a lesbian march in Chicago, three women carrying Jewish pride flags — rainbow flags embossed with a Star of David — were kicked out of the celebration on the grounds that their flags were a “trigger.” An organizer of the Dyke March told the Windy City Times that the fabric “made people feel unsafe” and that she and the other members of the Dyke March collective didn’t want anything “that can inadvertently or advertently express Zionism” at the event.

So why is Ms. Weiss glad about this? She explains:

Has there ever been a crisper expression of the consequences of “intersectionality” than a ban on Jewish lesbians from a Dyke March?

“Intersectionality,” is the recently popular notion that the suffering of any oppressed group parallels the suffering of all other oppressed groups. This gives rise to the following ill-informed, but unsurprising, conclusion: that Palestinians are oppressed, and therefore all people of good conscience must oppose Israel and (in this case at least) also oppose symbols of Judaism.

To Ms. Weiss’s point, there is something to be said for finally seeing proponents of “intersectionality” express a certain clarity on the matter.

In recognition of the hypocrisy and anti-Semitism of the Chicago event, we produced this shareable meme:

• Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is being called out for its anti-Semitism on the popular web site medium.com, in a commentary by Andrew Bennett. Bennett notes that the group has ties to Alison Weir, an anti-Semite known for having openly spread blood libels shared by white supremacists, and that it also has ties to writer Miko Peled, who has drawn attention to himself for anti-Semitic tweets. Bennet goes on to examine a series of JVP t-shirts and a recently released JVP video that blames Jews for (of all things) American police violence. If you’re curious to see some of the JVP twisted logic in action, take a look:

https://youtu.be/ppkr5pXrsZQ

JVP claims that no matter what it says, it could never possibly be considered anti-Semitic, because its membership includes Jews. In fact, the international definition of anti-Semitism (adopted by almost all of the Western world) does not make any exceptions for the ethnicity of the speaker. Thus, being Jewish does not provide anyone with immunity from the ability to engage in anti-Semitism.

Speaking to this point the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement that JVP:

…uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and to provide the movement with a veneer of legitimacy.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– More gas offshore Israel than originally thought – Daniel J. Graeber
– Egypt agrees to open Rafah border crossing – Alex Fishman

Featured image: CC0 Pexels;

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