Today’s Top Stories
1. Hezbollah might fire 1,500 rockets a day in next big war, according to source in Home Front Command.
“The scenario we are looking at is not a prediction of what will be. It spells out what we are building up our capabilities against. We believe we can stand up to the challenge,” the army source said.
Meanwhile, media reports claimed that Israel successfully tested the new David’s Sling defense system, which should be ready for deployment as early as 2016.
2. Turning sports into politics. The Palestinians chose to hold their marathon in Bethlehem to make a point about travel restrictions. The New York Times reports:
The Palestine Marathon, held last week, is a hemmed-in affair, much like the city where it is run. “In Bethlehem, there’s not a continuous 42 kilometers,” huffed Marwa Younis, 32, as she ran. “You have to run back and forth.”
But that is exactly why the organizers of the Right to Movement: Palestine Marathon chose to stage it here. What better way to draw attention to the constraints Palestinians say they face in their daily lives?
Exploiting sports for political gain is a growing trend among Palestinians. Just yesterday we reported on efforts by the Palestinian Football Association to seek a FIFA ban for Israel in international soccer competition.
3. Hague-based NGO reports a 71% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli documentary on Hamas’s use of children in combat presented at UN forum. Evidence from the film is intended to question whether the UNRWA, which runs a network of schools in Gaza, is being exploited by Hamas.
According to its own 2014 figures, UNRWA received a budget of $1.32 billion from international donors, of which $409 million was donated by the U.S. alone. It runs 245 schools in Gaza, more than one-third of which were impacted in last summer’s fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, according to UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness. Given that Hamas is in charge of Gaza, and UNRWA’s website makes clear that “Schoolchildren in UNRWA schools follow the host authorities’ curricula and textbooks,” the film suggests that the very group training children in military camps may also be dictating what they are taught in schools.
• Polls show US public support for Palestinian state is at a new low. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 39% of the public supports a Palestinian state while 36% oppose it. That’s a significant drop from the 58% supported it in 2003.
Commentary/Analysis
• LA Times op-ed comes out against US efforts to cultivate Arab partners in the fight against IS.
U.S. officials continue to insist that our Middle Eastern allies are crucial to the fight against Islamic State and to other Middle Eastern conflicts. But are they? To judge by the chaos their help has created in Syria, we’d be better off without them.
Meanwhile, IS fighters have reportedly captured a large Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, gaining a foothold close to the Syrian capital, though some of the area was retaken by Palestinians loyal to Hamas. The UN reported this week that 25,000 foreigners from 100 countries have joined IS and al-Qaida.
Rest of the Roundup
• Pro-BDS students at Edinburgh University in Scotland scheduled a vote on a BDS measure for the day before Passover, ensuring that many Jewish students would be unable to attend. The university’s Jewish Society president Emma Dubin blasted the failure to change the date. “I am worried that this is a framework that makes it impossible for Jewish voices to be heard. It is an anti-Semitic process to not have Jewish students’ voices being heard at this stage,” she told the Jewish Chronicle.
It’s the second year in a row that a BDS group attempted to steal a vote by scheduling it just before Passover. The same thing happened at Cornell in 2014, However, after the maneuver received substantial attention, the BDS motion was withdrawn.
Join the Fighting BDS Facebook page and stand up against the delegitimization of Israel.
• Israel applies to join China Development bank despite disapproval from the U.S.
Featured image: CC BY Giulio Bernardi via flickr, CC BY-NC Natasha Mileshina via flickr with modifications by HonestReporting
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
