Today’s Top Stories
1. US funds earmarked for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency should instead be gradually transferred to a separate UN body responsible for aiding the rest of the world’s refugees, suggested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Describing the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has overseen health care, schooling, social services and more for Palestinian refugees since 1950, the PM said:
“This is an agency that was established 70 years ago, only for Palestinian refugees, at a time when the UNHCR [UN High Commissioner for Refugees] deals with global refugee problems. Of course this creates a situation in which there are great-grandchildren of refugees, who are not refugees but who are cared for by UNRWA, and another 70 years will pass and those great-grandchildren will have great-grandchildren and therefore, this absurdity needs to stop,” Netanyahu said.
But Netanyahu noted that “genuine” Palestinian refugees still need assistance, and proposes that UNRWA funds from the United States should be “gradually shifted” to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has “clear criteria for supporting genuine refugees, not fictitious refugees as happens today under UNRWA.”
2. Israel expelled a Norwegian aid worker, and as luck would have it, it occurred while Norway’s Foreign Minister was visiting. Haaretz explains:
The activist is accused of having asked over the past several years for visas for activists in the aid group’s name under false pretenses. According to the authority, after they arrived in Israel the activists did not engage in humanitarian work but in other activities, some of them political.
The incident occurred in the midst of the first official visit to Israel of the new Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide. Haaretz has learned that the activist had been living in Israel for several years and when she tried to return to Israel Sunday morning after a short trip abroad, she was refused entry.
Norway also agreed to limit funding of non-governmental organizations promoting boycotts of Israel.
3. Israel arrested two Bedouin teenage girls accused of being in contact with Islamic State and plotting a terror attack in Israel. According to the Times of Israel, Rahma and Tasnin al-Assad carried out surveillance of possible targets in Beersheva. A third suspect, Ahmad Abu Ramila of eastern Jerusalem, was charged on lesser counts over his involvement in the plot.
4. The Independent Labels Electronic Intifada Head an ‘Expert’: There are a lot of problems with how the paper uses Ali Abunimah as a talking head.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
Israel and the Palestinians
• UNICEF, the UN agency responsible for providing assistance to children and mothers in developing countries, is spurring a campaign to label the Israeli military as ‘grave violators of children’s rights.’ Israel HaYom picked up on an NGO Monitor report.
If blacklisted, IDF would join the ranks of terrorist groups ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban and al-Qaida.
• Does Mohammad Fathi Janid qualify for 72 virgins? (I’m asking for a friend.)
• Jordan’s Interior Minister Minister Ghalib Zoabi toured the Temple Mount on Sunday and nothing happened. Zoabi was the first high level Jordanian official to visit the holy site since Trump’s Jerusalem declaration in December.
• The Israeli cabinet is revisiting plans to create off-shore artificial islands for Israeli homes and infrastructure. Discussion of the Dubai-style islands has been on-and-off over the years with opposition from environmental groups. The plans are unrelated to a separate proposal for an artificial island off of Gaza for the Palestinians, which would include a port and cargo terminal. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• Most sanitized coverage of Israel’s blacklist of BDS groups goes to the Irish Times. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement isn’t about “criticizing” Israeli policies, it’s about delegitimizing Israel.
The blacklist targets a grassroots movement known as Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), which criticises Israel over its policies towards the Palestinians.
• Turns out UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, one of the blacklisted pro-BDS groups whose senior members will be barred from Israel.
• Tweet of the day goes to Legal Insurrection.
Our ability to travel to Israel is a human right! Say #BDS supporters who try to bully others into not going to Israel >> @jvplive @US_Campaign @codepink #bdsfail
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) January 8, 2018
• JTA: A German bill would allow the expulsion of migrants “who make anti-Semitic statements, including the refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
Commentary
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Todd Stern: Jews should not venerate Trump
– Eli Lake: What a Soviet dissident sees in Iran’s unrest
– Nick Short: For Iran’s revolution to succeed, a free press is a must
Featured image: CC BY-NC Chris Walton; Norway CC BY-SA Lemsipmatt; Dubai CC BY-NC Richard Schneider;
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