Today’s Top Stories
1. The New Orleans city council rescinded a controversial pro-BDS measure “citing a misunderstanding of the deep divisions that surround a movement to boycott the state of Israel and a flawed approval process.”
Council President Jason Williams, who voted for the measure initially before agreeing to rescind it, said the council was not the right venue for sorting out the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“We are not going to solve the Middle East crisis in the city of New Orleans today,” Williams said.
2. Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon told the UN that there are now 82,000 fighters are under Iranian control in Syria.
There are 82,000 fighters “directly under Iranian authority in Syria,” Danon said, including 3,000 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, 9,000 members of Hezbollah and 10,000 members of “violent Shiia militias recruited from across the Mideast, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said.
In addition, Danon said that Iran “directly commands” 60,000 local Syrian fighters.
“These are hard facts that cannot be disrupted. Iran’s military is actively training these militant extremists and its using Syria as its strategic base,” Danon said.
Today, there are 82,000 fighters under Iran’s authority in Syria. 3,000 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, 9,000 fighters from Hezbollah, 10,000 members of Shia militias recruited from across the region, and an additional 60,000 local Syrian fighters. pic.twitter.com/VV3yQoM5cu
— Ambassador Danny Danon | דני דנון (@dannydanon) January 25, 2018
3. Haaretz: Denmark’s parliament overwhelmingly voted to exclude West Bank settlements from bilateral agreements with Israel. The vote also:
– Strengthens government guidelines against investing in projects over the Green Line.
– Adopts UN Resolution 2334, which claims settlements violate international law.
– Supports a UN blacklist (in the works) of companies doing business in the West Bank.
According to the Foreign Ministry, Israel and Denmark currently have 13 direct bilateral agreements in the fields of aviation, culture, education, law, industry, taxes and visas.
The latest resolution will affect future agreements between the two countries, with regard to their implementation in the territories, whether with institutions or private citizens. Existing agreements might be effected pending updates.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• As Gaza approaches ‘famine,’ Israel, rather than world, appears most concerned, the Times of Israel reports. Measures flying below the radar include allowing “dual-use” construction items that were previously banned because they could be used for building tunnels. And then there’s Gaza’s electricity situation:
The Palestinian Authority recently decided to renew the electricity supply to Gaza by resuming payments for power generated by Israel (now providing power to homes for six hours, followed by 12 hours of darkness).
But the decision to renew the power supply was not due to a sudden stroke of generosity by the PA. According to sources, it was the result of an ultimatum by Israel: The Jewish state warned the PA that if it didn’t renew payments for the Gaza power bill, the Israeli government would cover the costs with PA tax money it collects. Ramallah understood the message and made a public show of renewing electricity payments.
That likely explains why Israel will supply electricity to a Gaza sewage treatment facility due to become fully operational in two months, per Ynet.
Manelis urged the Lebanese people to “open their eyes” and acknowledge the fact that their county has become the subject of nothing short of a takeover by Iran.
“Perhaps most egregious is what lies beneath the surface,” he wrote. “Lebanese authorities’ acquiescence and the willingness of many in the international community to turn a blind eye have allowed Iran to turn Lebanon into one big missile factory. This goes beyond weapon shipments, funding or counseling. Iran has set up a new de facto branch, the ‘Lebanese branch’ right here.
On a related note, the Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter) profiles Maj. Avichay Adraee, whose Arabic language posts on Facebook and Twitter have garnered more than one million combined followers, many from countries Israel has no relations with.
• Over at the UN Security Council, US Ambassador Nikki Haley denounced PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, suggesting the US will move on without him:
“The United States remains deeply committed to helping the Israelis and Palestinians reach a historic peace agreement,” she said. “But we will not chase after a Palestinian leadership that lacks what is needed to achieve peace. To get historic results, we need courageous leaders.”
• If you’re looking for tea leaves to assess Mideast peace prospects, Mahmoud Abbas told the leader of Israel’s dovish Meretz party that “the Oslo accords are dead.”
• Is American evangelical support for Israel peaking? What’s behind it, and what do polls of younger Christians suggest for the future? And how is Israel responding? The Washington Post delves into the issue.
• PA police uncovered and defused 12 barrel bombs buried alongside a road near the Palestinian town of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank. It’s not clear who planted the bombs or when, but the stretch of road is located in Area A, where the PA has administrative and security responsibility. Each bomb weighed 20-30 kg. Ynet explains:
According to the Palestinian security source, a Palestinian man noticed suspicious objects peeking out of the ground on the side of the road, which were uncovered due to the heavy rainfall over the weekend.
An IDF spokeswoman told the Jerusalem Post that said that military vehicles “sometimes” pass along the road where the improvised explosive devices were found.
• The Guardian visited the Shuafat refugee camp in eastern Jerusalem to gauge the mood of Palestinians bracing for US aid cuts.
• My antennae are twitching over this lede sentence in the Daily Telegraph. I can’t recall ever seeing a mainstream news site use foreign language characters (in this case, Arabic) in the text of an article — much less the lede sentence.
Around the World
• Ohio State University‘s Undergraduate Student Government is under fire “for a rushed, irregular secret ballot vote Wednesday night that rammed through a resolution in support of an anti-Israel boycott.”
As the USG was being expelled from the room at midnight, two secret ballot votes were quickly cast within minutes—the first attempt returned more ballots than senators present—and it was announced that the motion calling for the University Senate to create an ad-hoc committee to review OSU investments in companies complicit in human rights abuses had passed.
• Former U. Maryland Professor Melissa Landa filed a federal discrimination charge “alleging that her termination from the institution was retaliation by her superiors for her extramural pro-Israel advocacy.”
• Jerusalem Post: PayPal closes account of French BDS organization.
• Some International Holocaust Remembrance Day developments:
– Drawing Israeli rebuke, Polish lawmakers advanced legislation making it a crime to blame Poland for Nazi atrocities.
– Saudi-based Muslim body rejects Holocaust denial.
– A historic Holocaust awareness awakening in Saudi Arabia, of all places
– Social media storm breaks over Corbyn’s ‘Jew-free’ Holocaust Memorial Day statement
– Kurz says Austria bears ‘responsibility’ for Holocaust.
– Germany’s Merkel warns of increased anti-Semitism on Holocaust Remembrance Day
Commentary
• Worth reading: Over at The Atlantic, Tamara Coffman Wittes and Daniel Shapiro weigh in on the latest polls suggesting that American support for Israel is becoming politicized. “Americans are far more divided on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than they are on Israel itself.”
• Matan Dansker reviewed Yoram Peri’s new book, “Mediatizing Wars: Power, Paradox and Israel’s Strategic Dilemma.” The book’s only available in Hebrew right now. The review is must-read:
The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, known as the Second Lebanon War, is where the author pinpoints the change between “media” and “mediazation” in this region. Israel was unprepared for its soldiers being equipped with cellphones and cameras. These soldiers sent uncensored, and often gruesome, pictures from the battlefield, harming public morale, while Hezbollah carefully controlled its messages to its own audience as well as to the international community, presenting pictures of Lebanese citizens being bombed by Israel’s mighty military on social media. This had a direct negative effect on the war itself.
One of the most disturbing examples Peri cites is an incident that occurred in the deadliest confrontation of the Second Lebanon War, now known as the Battle of Bint Jbeil. A direct order was given by the IDF for its troops to capture a house, raise an Israeli flag on top of it and photograph it for PR purposes. Rather than the picture becoming the outcome of the conquest, it became the goal of the mission itself. This set a precedent in which soldiers’ lives were risked in an operation whose purpose is to advance a media need as opposed to a strategic need.
The book serves as a wake-up call to readers, especially in Israel. It shows how our mediatized world (including both conventional and social media) can give an unprecedented advantage to those perceived to be the underdog or the occupied.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Amb. Danny Danon: Why does the UNRWA operate in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority?
– Peter Wertheim: Should the US cut aid to the Palestinians?
– Roger Cohen: It’s time for Mahmoud Abbas to go
– David Horovitz: Siding firmly with Israel, Trump plainly no longer convinced Abbas wants peace
– The Australian (staff-ed): Palestinians’ pointless boycott
– Jonathan Schanzer, Richard Goldberg: How Trump can help the Palestinians promote peace
– Anders Persson: Why there’s no chance Europe will solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
– Avi Issacharoff: As Gaza approaches ‘famine,’ Israel, rather than world, appears most concerned
– Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: Silencing and intimidating journalists
– Hussain Nadim: Pakistan: Making peace with Israel
– Qanta Ahmed: Jerusalem belongs to the Jews: An Islamic truth
– Naftali Bennett: My country bars enemies from entry. Yours would do the same
– Armin Rosen: How New Orleans almost got duped into endorsing BDS
– Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: The UN’s horrid Holocaust hypocrisy
– New York Post (staff-ed): Amnesty International shows its anti-Israel bias yet again
Featured image: CC0 Public Domain Pictures/Alice Birkin; Denmark via YouTube/StockFootage.com; Manelis via Twitter/Hen Mazzig; Christianity CC BY-SA HonestReporting; Warsaw Ghetto via Wikimedia Commons; quill CC0 Pixabay/Ashreila;
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