Today’s Top Stories
1. As the Bashar Assad’s forces press their offensive against rebels in southern Syria’s Daraa province, civilians are fleeing to the Israeli border. An estimated 50,000 people have been displaced by fighting and Jordan isn’t taking in any more refugees:
Daraa’s residents described living in extreme fear and said many had also headed to the border with Israel, believing it to be safer.
“The safest place is the border with Israel because the regime and Russian airplanes cannot strike the area near the Israeli border,” said Waseem Kiwan, a 36-year old civilian in the village of Tafas north of Daraa city . . .
An Israeli military spokesperson said the IDF “is prepared for a large variety of scenarios and is monitoring the events in the area.”
Question is, what does this mean for Israel?
2. Prince William’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian areas continued with events in Tel Aviv emphasizing youth activism followed by a a meeting with PA chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. The Jewish Chronicle is live-blogging the Duke of Cambridge’s day.
The royal, who is second in line to the throne, will tour Jerusalem’s Old City tomorrow. It’s expected — though not confirmed — that the Prince William will visit the Western Wall, Temple Mount and Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Those would presumably classified as private visits, similar to the protocol of President Donald Trump’s 2017 visit. He will also visit the grave of his great-grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, on the Mount of Olives before leaving Israel.
..and immediately reminded of context as journos asked to remove lanyards with Israeli flag ahead of municipality visit #royalvisitpalestine pic.twitter.com/AmIKqnmPe3
— Justin Cohen (@CohenJust) June 27, 2018
3. Israel is boycotting the current session of the UN Human Rights Council. “Without any fanfare it stopped attending the daily council session last week after the United States announced that it planned to withdraw from the UNHRC.” The Jerusalem Post explains:
Israel has since gone through a second periodic review in January, the results of which are due to be voted on this Friday.
After that it has time to consider what relationship it wants with the UNHRC in light of the Trump Administration’s announcement, which has not ended what Israel considers to be a slew of biased steps.
On Monday the UNHRC is set to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under Agenda Item 7. It is mandated to hold this debate at every session, no other country is singled out in this way. All other country specific human rights issues are debated under Agenda Item 4, save for Israel.
The UNHRC is also working on a black list of companies doing business with Israeli regions over the pre-1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
4. Bigoted Columnist: Jews ‘Poisoning the Wells’: Accusing Jews of ‘poisoning the wells’ is a classic antisemitic trope dating back to medieval Europe. Columnist Peter Oborne just revived it in one of the world’s most-read papers.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
Israel and the Palestinians
• Palestinians fired 13 rockets at Israel early this morning after the IDF targeted an empty car it said belonged to a Hamas operative involved with the production and launching of terror kites and balloons. The Times of Israel explains the emerging dynamic:
In recent weeks, the military has adopted a policy of targeting Hamas positions in response to repeated incendiary kite and balloon attacks from Gaza in an effort to force the group, which rules the coastal enclave, to stop launching the arson devices and to force others in the Strip to abandon the tactic as well.
However, Hamas is attempting to maintain that the near-constant airborne arson attacks, which have burned thousands of acres of Israeli land, do not warrant retaliatory strikes by Israel and therefore accuses Jerusalem of violating the tacit ceasefire between the two sides.
• Officials in Cyprus confirmed they are considering Israel’s proposal to set up a port to process goods bound for Gaza. Meanwhile, the PA rejected Israeli and US ideas to help the Strip. Ramallah claims that improving Gaza’s living conditions is “undermining the Palestinian national project.” It’s a very, very hard line:
Some PA representatives said they were hoping that the sanctions would aggravate the humanitarian crisis to a point where Palestinians would revolt against Hamas, which violently seized the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.
The Media Line dug deeper into the Cyprus story.
• Journalists cried foul after the Prime Minister’s security detail barred an Associated Press reporter from covering Prince William’s meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu. Nebi Qena, an Albanian citizen, has been AP’s chief television producer for Israel and the Palestinian Authority for three years and is accredited with the Government Press Office:
He said he was repeatedly questioned by security guards about his “ethnic origin.” AP colleagues, on the scene and in the Jerusalem bureau, were asked by Netanyahu aides about Qena’s religion and whether he was a Muslim as they tried to secure him entrance.
Qena had registered for the event ahead of time and been assured he would be allowed to enter. The AP was serving as the video press pool for international media.
“The Associated Press decries this blatant ethnic and religious profiling of an AP journalist and calls on the prime minister’s office to cease such biased practices immediately,” said Lauren Easton, the AP’s director of media relations.
The Prime Minister’s Office subsequently apologized, attributing the mishap to “human error.”
Veteran journalists with government-issued press credentials attending media events with government-issued invitations don’t deserve this. Full stop.
• Nobody bracing for the eventual post-Mahmoud Abbas era ever imagined this. (Reuters deleted the original tweet and posted this update, though not before people poked Reuters with screengrabs.
• “Israel has reversed its ban on Indonesian tourists entering the country, after Jakarta agreed to lift its own moratorium on issuing visas to groups of Israelis, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.”
Window into Israel
• The IDF ombudsman released what’s being described as a “gloomy” assessment of the military’s readiness for war, listing a variety of shortcomings, Ynet explains.
“If I read you these reports, you would fall over,” Brik said of the report whose content is not made available to the public.
The report is rife with pessimistic conclusions and highlights a series of failures in the IDF apparatus that he says could come to the fore in the IDF’s levels of preparation during the next war.
According to Brik, concerning discrepancies exist between the public declarations and bravado about the IDF’s capabilities and the realities on the ground.
Around the World
• Poland backtracks on contentious Holocaust law, scrapping threat of prison.
[Prime Minister Mateusz] Morawiecki asked the parliament to reopen discussions on the law. According to a statement by his office, the government believes that the law did not achieve its goal of “defending the good name of Poland and the historical truth.” . . .
In its current form, the law makes it a criminal offense to accuse the Polish people or Polish state of being responsible or a partner to the Nazi crimes and outlaws the use of the term “Polish death camps” in reference to death camps that Nazi Germany established in Poland during World War II.
• Johannesburg city councilwoman Mpho Phalatse, who was suspended for calling Israel a friend of the South African city, apologized for her remarks.
• Jeremy Corbyn’s Gaza briefing for Labour MPs accuses IDF of “war crimes.” One Labour MP described the document to the Jewish Chronicle as “disgustingly one sided.”
• A little-known New York Democrat who slammed Israel for Gaza killings is the shock winner of a New York primary election. Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez — a supporter of Bernie Sanders and member of Democratic Socialists of America — defeated influential incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley, who many viewed as a potential Speaker of the House. New York’s 14th congressional district is heavily Democratic, making Ocasia-Cortez a virtual shoo-in to defeat Republican challenger Anthony Pappas in the November elections.
• Ten US university presidents visit Israel on trip to promote academic collaboration.
• Bands supporting BDS not welcome in Frankfurt, says deputy mayor.
Commentary
• J St. chief Jeremy Ben-Ami is entitled to his views on US Ambassador David Friedman. I just find it a odd that this commentary urging Congress to call the envoy onto the carpet was published in a British paper. Exactly what kind of audience is Ben-Ami playing to? The wider US public, or like-minded readers of The Guardian?
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– David Horovitz: Prince William says Israel ties are soaring. But visit signifies more than that
– Roger Boyes: Prince William’s visit is a snub to the camel corps
– Melanie Phillips: HRH, the FCO and the big lie about Israel
– Nadav Eyal: The British interest behind Prince William’s Israel visit
– Daily Telegraph (staff-ed): The significance of Prince William’s visit to Israel cannot be overestimated
– Avi Issacharoff: In Gaza, Hamas is dictating the rules of the game with Israel
– Amos Harel: Netanyahu’s Gaza dilemma: How to avoid a war without being ‘weak on terror’
– Charles Bybelezer: An ‘Israeli’ port in Cyprus: Kicking the Gaza can down the waterway?
– Yonah Jeremy Bob: The Gaza crisis, Israeli hasbara and the ICC
– Yoram Ettinger: Quitting the UNHRC: A message to the free world
– Zev Chafets: Trump’s new deal for the Middle East
– Vijeta Uniyal: ‘Dear Shashi Naidoo: Like you, I too share the desire for peace’
– Yoel Guzansky, Oded Eran: The Red Sea: An old-new arena of interest
Featured image: CC BY-SA The Next Web Photos; soldier CC BY-NC Israel Defense Forces; Auschwitz CC BY Juan Antonio Segal;
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