Today’s Top Stories
It is one of six reports on Israel that will be presented to the council on March 19.
Five charge Israel with human rights abuses in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and the sixth focuses on Israeli actions on the Golan Heights.
One of the reports also dedicates a third of its content to charges of human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and by the PA and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel remains the only country with so many reports issued against it. The Human Rights Council, for example, has issued only a single report each on human rights issues in countries such as Syria and Iran.
The reports are expected to result in at least five resolutions condemning Israel, again more condemnations than against any other country.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
2. Arab diplomats are quietly nudging Mahmoud Abbas to accept whatever peace plan offered by Donald Trump, rather than risk future regret. The Times of Israel, picking up on Egyptian media reports, writes:
Abbas, according to the Egyptian paper, told some of the Arab leaders he had met or contacted lately that he fears that he would be accused of treason if he accepted what Israel was offering the Palestinians.
However, one of the Arab leaders rejected Abbas’s argument, saying the time has come to “prepare Arab public opinion for the new phase, away from charges of treason,” the Arab diplomat added.
3. Vladimir Putin angered a lot of Jews (and US lawmakers) when he suggested to Megyn Kelly of NBC News that meddling in US elections might have been done by Jews.
“Maybe they’re not even Russians,” he said. “Maybe they’re Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or maybe a green card. Maybe it was the Americans who paid them for this work. How do you know? I don’t know.”
4. Is US foreign aid funding terror? HR’s Daniel Pomerantz debated terror stipends on i24 News with Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The IDF arrested a pair of Palestinians who crossed the Gaza border fence on Sunday morning. One was caught with a gun and knife and is suspected of planning a terror attack. The other Palestinian was caught in a different location unarmed. The two are not believed to be associated with each other.
• For the latest on efforts to resolve Israel’s coalition crisis, see Ynet, Times of Israel reports one and two, the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz.
And for commentary on the domestic scene, see Gil Hoffman and Yaakov Katz.
Around the World
• In the fallout from the Louis Farrakhan scandal dividing Jews and feminists, one of the Women’s March leaders apologized to ‘hurt and betrayed’ members.
• “Security guards who were assigned to protect the world’s largest tourism trade fair in Berlin, harassed an Israeli booth on Thursday, screaming pro-Palestinian slogans.”
• Anti-Semitic vandalism in Holland rises 40% to highest level since 2007.
• CNN: Israeli trauma experts are in Parkland, Florida, meeting with “teachers, counselors, first responders, clergy and others to offer practical lessons learned from Israel’s vast experience with terrorism and war.”
• First Jewish university to open in Russia next month, the JTA reports.
• Study finds fake news spreads faster than some real news on Twitter.
Commentary
• White House peace envoy Jason Greenblatt got op-ed space in the Washington Post to call out Hamas’ misrule of and rejectionism of peace.
• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels over the issues between Jews, feminists and Louis Farrakhan.
– Jesse Singal: Why won’t Women’s March leaders denounce Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism?
– Emma Teitel: Jews are unwelcome on the feminist left
– Jonathan Tobin: Women’s rights and intersectionalism don’t go hand in hand
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– MK Michael Oren: Getting out of the Iranian check
– Maria Polizoidou: Is Greece about to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital?
– Michael Wilner: Seoul searching: Israel’s unexplored alliance with South Korea
– Alan Dershowitz: What Is a ‘refugee’? The Jews from Morocco vs. the Palestinians from Israel
– Nadav Shragai: ISIS takes aim at the Temple Mount
– Dan Hodges: Jeremy Corbyn and his anti-Semitic pals smashed the moral compass
– Marcus Dysch: Anti-Semitism fatigue is now a normal part of British politics
– Mark Sokolow: Trump, siding with terrorists by letting PLO off the hook
– Hadley Freeman: There’s one hero of Entebbe who deserves his own film. I remember him well
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA xeeliz; Hussein via UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre; Farrakhan via YouTube/The Nation of Islam; writing CC BY-SA Nic McPhee;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
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