Today’s Top Stories
1. Twitter told Buzzfeed it won’t take action against antisemitic preacher Louis Farrakhan over his tweet calling Jews “termites.”
The tweet appears to violate Twitter’s proposed new policies around “dehumanizing” tweets, defined in a company blog post as “language that treats others as less than human … Examples can include comparing groups to animals and viruses (animalistic), or reducing groups to a tool for some other purpose (mechanistic).”
However, a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the rules have not yet taken effect, so Farrakhan’s language is not in violation of any extant policy. The spokesperson did not give a date for when the new rule would go into effect, or if it would at all. He did not address whether Farrakhan’s tweet would be in violation were the policy in effect.
https://twitter.com/LouisFarrakhan/status/1052304476923719680
2. Hamas and other Gaza factions had agreed to scale back border clashes before Wednesday’s rocket fire, according to Arab reports picked up by the Times of Israel:
The timeline in the report is significant, because it implies that the major Gazan factions were looking for de-escalation when an unknown faction fired two rockets at Israel early Wednesday, one of them slamming into a home in Beersheba and destroying it.
3. Twitter data shows Iranians masqueraded as foreign journalists to push political messages.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
In the News
• Following yesterday’s surge of rockets and air strikes, Israel’s security cabinet instructed the IDF to change the rules of the game moving forward. The army lifted home front restrictions on communities adjacent to the Gaza border. Hamas leaders also came out of hiding. Last but not least, Beersheva mother Miri Tamano described how she saved her children as a Palestinian rocket destroyed her house.
• Stoking controversy, Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, was due to address the UN Security Council today about the situation in the Mideast. The Times of Israel invited both Hagai El-Ad and Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, to make their cases for and against El-Ad’s address.
If this all feels like deja vu, it’s because El-Ad addressed the UNSC in 2016.
• The Australian Federal Police (AFP) were asked to investigate the leak of an intelligence document concerning the proposed relocation of Australia’s embassy to Jerusalem. The Guardian Australia obtained an Australian Security Intelligence Organisation memo warning that moving the embassy “may provoke protest, unrest and possibly some violence in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Considering that Palestinians never pass up an opportunity for a good “day of rage,” I hardly see the necessity of marking the assessment “Secret” and “AUSTEO” (Australian eyes only).
• Israeli companies to secure UN forces in Africa.
• Per the Jerusalem Post, “Police are investigating the vandalism of a cemetery belonging to the Salesian monastery Beit Jamal, located near Beit Shemesh, after its cruciform tombstones were pushed over and many of the tombs were destroyed.”
• Drip drip drip: Is the Jeremy Corbyn revolution starting to devour its own? The Jewish Chronicle reports that Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum, which propelled to Corbyn to the top of Britain’s Labour party, said Jewish Voice for Labour’s very existence inflames tensions between the party and the Jewish community.
The JVL is made up of hard leftists who appropriated their Jewish identity to attack Israel and mainstream UK Jewry. Lansman is also Jewish.
• Flyers promoting a talk with Israeli Druze, Arabs and Christians were defaced at the University of Houston.
Commentary
• Yair Rosenberg makes the case to not kick Louis Farrakhan off of Twitter:
Because erasing hate from social media doesn’t make it go away, it just makes it easier to ignore. When Farrakhan and his supporters are out and about on Twitter, racking up retweets, getting tens of thousands of video views, and spreading bigoted calumnies, it makes it much more difficult to dismiss them as inconsequential, as so many of their apologists have attempted to do.
On a related note, Eli Lake gets tweet of the day.
He was only talking about the termites that support Israel. The other termites are fine and welcome to participate in the next women’s march. https://t.co/UcaxWUWq1S
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) October 17, 2018
• Gaza’s on my mind today . . .
– Yoav Limor: A game-changing event
– Anshel Pfeffer: The rocket from Gaza that struck an Israeli home and almost caused a war
– Amos Yadlin: How to get out of the Palestinian trap
– Prof. Eyal Zisser: The storm before the storm
– Seth Frantzman: Major escalation as Gaza calculates conflict with Israel
– Daniel Siryoti: Hamas fears Egypt’s wrath
– Marc Schulman: The pressure is on Netanyahu to do something dramatic
– Yoni Ben Menachem: Hamas attack tunnels are still a serious danger
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– The Australian (staff-ed): Australia stands up at the UN
– Albert Dadon: Israel’s capital in Jerusalem can be Palestinians’ great hope
– Daniel Shapiro: Why the Khashoggi murder is a disaster for Israel
– Paul Miller: No, Israel has no obligation to let in a BDS supporter
– Eytan Meir: Hebrew University crossed a redline on the Alqasem appeal
– Shoshana Bryen: UNESCO: Why the United States needs to watch out
– Yuval Rotem: Why digital diplomacy matters
– Manfred Gerstenfeld, Irene Kuruc: Antisemitic conspiracy theories proliferate in UK’s Labour party
Featured image: CC BY-NC Kent Landerholm; El-Ad via YouTube/SISO Movement; Lansman via YouTube/Owen Jones; monkey CC0 Pixabay;
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
Before you comment on this article, please note our Comments Policy. Any comments deemed to be in breach of the policy will be removed at the editor’s discretion.
