Today’s Top Stories
1. Breaking news: Just before this roundup was published, it was reported that the IDF destroyed a Hamas naval tunnel.
#BREAKING: #IDF has destroyed a #Hamas naval tunnel which would have allowed frogmen to swim out to sea undetected. The tunnel, which was in northern #GazaStrip, was discovered several months ago and destroyed on June 3rd pic.twitter.com/hPLT9tFhI4
— Anna Ahronheim (@AAhronheim) June 10, 2018
2. Here’s a sentence I never imagined writing: US Mideast envoy fisks chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Haaretz, even calling for Erekat’s ouster. (Greenblatt was responding to Erekat’s invective against Israel and the Trump administration last month.)
Dr. Erekat – we have heard your voice for decades and it has not achieved anything close to Palestinian aspirations or anything close to a comprehensive peace agreement. Other Palestinian perspectives might help us finally achieve a comprehensive peace agreement where Palestinian and Israeli lives can be better.
3. According to Syrian rebels, Iranian-allied militias which left the Israeli border have returned disguised as Syrian soldiers, the Wall St. Journal reports (click via Twitter). The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz picked up on this.
After initially appearing to withdraw, military convoys of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and other Iran-backed militias have returned to both Daraa and Quneitra provinces in Syria’s southwest near Israel, dressed in Syrian military uniforms and under Syrian flags, according to multiple rebel commanders.
The convoys that returned were equipped with rockets and missiles, one of the rebel commanders said.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
4. A Journalist’s Wall of Lies: Reporter Sarah Helm distorts and embellishes facts to vividly support the Palestinian narrative in her stories.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Breaking with European Union policy, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was due to visit the Western Wall today. The Jerusalem Post says it’s “the first time in recent memory that a leader of an EU country will visit the holy site, even for what is being billed only as a ‘private visit.'”
• Clashes continued along the Gaza border on Friday, with Palestinians launching incendiary kites and helium balloons, and as usual, throwing stones and firebombs and trying to breach the fence. The demonstrations coincided with Quds Day, but only 10,000 Palestinians showed up. A few journalists were invited to cover the clashes with the IDF. I liked Nikki Guttman’s dispatch for Israel HaYom and New York Times correspondent David Halbfinger’s Twitter thread.
In a new escalation, Palestinians also launched helium balloons carrying explosives detonated by remote control. No Israelis were injured. In another first, an Israeli aircraft fired a warning shot at Palestinians preparing terror balloons. Meanwhile, one Israeli defense contractor said that it is ‘working on solution’ to Gaza’s incendiary kites.
• For the first time, Palestinians launched terror kites in the West Bank on Thursday.
The kites were flown over the settlements of Matan, Yarhiv and Nirit, three Jewish communities in the West Bank near the central Israeli city of Kfar Saba.
One of the kites caused a fire in a field, which was quickly put out without major damage, while another struck a power line, causing a power outage in the area for several hours.
• When Mark Twain said “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” I wonder if he had in mind Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the Palestinian Authority’s Supreme Sharia Judge and an advisor to Mahmoud Abbas on religious affairs. MEMRI flagged this comment by Habbash denying Jewish ties to the Temple Jerusalem at a conference attended by various ambassadors, religious leaders and other dignitaries:
. . . the struggle in Jerusalem is between the rightful owners of the city – the Muslims and Christians – and “some foreign Western imperialists that have no connection to this soil.” He added that the state of Israel is an imperialist Western enterprise whose purpose is to weaken and divide the Arab world, and that the claim that the Jews have a historical connection to Jerusalem is nothing but a distortion of history.
• Israel has complained to the UN that Hezbollah is helping Hamas set up missile factories and training facilities in Lebanon, according to Arab media reports picked up by the Jerusalem Post and Ynet.
• It’s very unusual that the IDF is sending chief spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis to appear before a French parliamentary committee to clarify the military’s response to the Gaza clashes. Since when did anyone from the IDF go and give evidence in a foreign parliament?
Foreign Affairs Committee Deputy Chairman and French Jewish MP Meyer Habib came up with the idea of inviting Manelis to address the forum following the most recent meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which was also attended by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
According to Habib, although the committee could have focused its attention on any pressing international matter, four out of the six speeches by faction spokespersons “focused solely on Gaza and the slander of Israel.”
• The Los Angeles Times rounded up followup fallout from the Argentine soccer snub.
• Israel’s recent ban on Indonesians threatens eastern Jerusalem travel industry. According to The Media Line, “Ten of thousands of Indonesians visit Israel each year, with numbers until now growing.”
• While in London, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down for an interview with BBC Newsnight. I’m not familiar with the style of reporter Evan Davis, but he frequently wouldn’t let the prime minister answer his questions. Netanyahu was far more patient with Davis than I would’ve been.
Window into Israel
• Globes takes a closer look at the Israeli government’s latest plan for combating drought and raising the water level of the Kinneret Lake, also known as the Sea Galilee.
The plan includes building two desalination facilities, a rivers reclamation plan, connecting isolated areas to the National Water Carrier and replenishing the Kinneret by “pouring 100 million cubic meters of desalinated water a year” into the lake by reversing the flow of water.
Around the World
• Spain’s third-largest city voted to boycott Israel. Valencia’s municipal council declared the city of 1.5 million people an a “Israeli apartheid-free zone.” Related reading: BDS: The Bane in Spain.
• Antisemitic incidents drop sharply in Poland and Hungary, watchdogs say.
• Jewish student films his New Jersey college professor sharing conspiracy theories and antisemitic tropes. Students in Clyde Magarelli’s sociology classes were told, among other things, that Judaism has degenerated into a racist religion, Ashkenazi Jews are not genetically descended from the ancient Israelites, and the moon landing was faked.
Feldman’s body was found outside her hometown of Wiesbaden. Bashar was arrested by Kurdish authorities in Erbil acting on an international arrest warrant.
• Fire ravages Russian Jewish cemetery; police investigating possible arson.
• Boycotting the boycotters: Hampstead Jews vow to avoid new Co-op over chain’s Israel stance
• Guest editors of a University of Sydney student newspaper featured a front page photo of a suicide bomber with an AK-47 who killed Israeli and Lebanese soldiers in 1985. After the Australasian Union of Jewish Students demanded an apology, the University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council “passed a motion, 11 to 10, against AUJS on Wednesday night for complaining about the publication.” More on the story at The Algemeiner.
• For the second time now, a German intelligence report has labeled BDS as antisemitic.
• AP picked up on an American Jewish Committee poll which found deep divisions between Israeli and American Jewish attitudes on a range of issues, such as the embassy move, Netanyahu-Trump relations, mixed prayer at the Western Wall, and more.
Commentary
• Nice to see The Guardian has some semblance of standards. The Jewish Chronicle reports editors refused to publish this cartoon by Steve Bell, who insists its not antisemitic. It features prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Theresa May as Palestinian medic Razan al-Najar burns in the fireplace behind them. Najar was killed last week during the Gaza clashes.
• Plenty of commentary about the Gaza situation . . .
– Vivian Bercovici: When toys become weapons and nobody notices
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Hamas failed, but the Gaza problem is far from resolution
– Haviv Rettig Gur: Gaza is going to get worse before it gets better
– Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Mired in delusions
– Kenneth Jacobson: Feeding Palestinian illusions
– Yaniv Kubovich: Iran’s fighting force in Gaza is the one calling and firing the shots
– Melanie Phillips: The lethal moral confusion of saying Kaddish for Hamas
• Here’s what they’re saying about the Argentine soccer snub . . .
– Ron Prosor: Waging diplomatic counter-terrorism in the wake of Israel-Argentina
– Yaakov Katz: Cut the politics: Regev, Messi and the BDS movement
– Gustavo Perednik: Cry for us, Argentina
– Amotz Asa-El: Crying for Argentina
– New York Daily News (staff-ed): Argentina vs. Israel: Not so friendly
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend . . .
– Justin Cohen: Letting Hezbollah flags fly in London is a terrible indictment of our government’s approach to extremism
– Judith Bergman: Marching for terrorism in London? No problem
– Tom Tugendhat: Violence is the purpose of Iranian-backed Hizbollah. Britain ignoring that helps nobody
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: Is Jordan burning?
– Abdulrahman Al-Rashed: Jordan’s protests: Economic or political?
– Sander Gerber, Yossi Kuperwasser: The PA sponsors terrorism, and the Taylor Force Act finally puts it out in the open
– David Weinberg: Hasbara war strategies
– Alex Fishman: An invitation to an unquiet Syrian border
– Cinnamon Stillwell: Zionists need not apply to San Francisco St. Univesity?
– Brendan O’Neill: No, Islamophobia is not the new antisemitism
– David Harris: A tragic anniversary: The end of Jewish life in Libya
Featured image: CC0 Pexels; Greenblatt via YouTube/AP Archive; Erekat via YouTube/AP Archive; Manelis CC BY-SA Wikimedia Commons; Kinneret CC BY-NC-ND Tony Young; Messi via YouTube/MagicalMessi;
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