Today’s Top Stories
1. Police investigators questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on suspicion of improperly accepting valuable gifts from businessmen. The PM insists he’s done nothing wrong. Take your pick of Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, YNet or Times of Israel coverage.
“The National Unit of the Israel Police investigated the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, under caution this evening on suspicion that he received benefits from businessmen,” the police spokesperson’s unit said in a statement shortly after. “Naturally, no further details beyond these can be provided at this stage.”
2. Might Israel face another hostile resolution from the UN Security Council? That’s what Prime Minister Netanyahu’s warning. The council is scheduled to meet on January 17, just three days before President Barack Obama steps down. According to Israeli media reports:
Although it was not specified what kind of additional action Netanyahu believes could be taken against Israel at the Security Council, Channel 10 reported last week that the prime minister thinks the Middle East Quartet — the US, UN, Russia and EU — will coordinate positions at the Paris summit, and then return to the Security Council in the very last days of Obama’s presidency to cement these new parameters on Mideast peacemaking.
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3. Palestinians flew a drone over the West Bank settlement of Havat Ma’on, near Hebron, gathering footage of possibly sensitive areas before crashing into a wooded area, according to Israeli media reports. There’s a European Union angle to the story:
The Palestinian group accused of flying the drone was identified by Channel 2 as the Ramallah-based Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works with Palestinian farmers and agricultural professionals on a host of programs and activities in the West Bank. The group receives some funding from the European Union, Regavim alleged . . .
An unnamed source with the European Union told Channel 2 that the operator of the drone was a freelancer and that he was filming Palestinian agricultural fields when the device was allegedly overtaken by settlers then crashed.
It’s not the first time Regavim and the EU have butted heads over drones in the West Bank. In 2015, Regavim made waves for flying a drone to document EU-support for illegally built Palestinian structures.
4. CNN: Istanbul Terror Victim “Palestinian Citizen of Israel”: Leanne Nasser was a citizen of Israel. Period.
5. NPR Covers Up the Ethnic Cleansing of Jews: The reason the population of the West Bank was entirely Palestinian by 1967 was because Jordan expelled the indigenous Jews in 1948.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Hoping to put pressure on Hamas to return the bodies of two Israeli soldiers and release two Israeli citizens held in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem announced they will no longer return the bodies of Hamas terrorists. Instead, bodies will be buried — and exhumed for future swaps.
Hamas holds the remains of Lt. Hadar Goldin and Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, who were killed in the 2014 Gaza War. Hamas holds two Israeli nationals, Avraham Mengistu and Juma Ibrahim Abu Anima. Both wandered into Gaza in separate incidents and are said to be mentally unbalanced.
• Hamas leader floats, uh, withdraws idea of West Bank-Gaza Strip federation.
• Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told reporters there are no plans to relocate the Aussie embassy to Jerusalem. She was responding to a commentary by former prime minister Tony Abbott urging the embassy move as well as a cut in foreign aid to the Palestinians.
More background at the Jerusalem Post.
• According to the Jerusalem Post, moderate Arabs are watering down their responses to John Kerry’s speech because they want to make a good impression with President-elect Donald Trump.
• Education Minister Naftali Bennett discussed in a Washington Post Q+A why he’s pushing to annex West Bank settlement blocs.
• A by-the-numbers look at Israel’s population at the end of 2016 — based on Central Bureau of Statistics figures:
8.63 million: overall population
167,000: population growth
74.8%: Jewish population
20.8%: Arab population
4.4%: Druze and other minorities
181,000: babies born
36,000: new immigrants
• Props to The Australian for scrutinizing World Vision’s aid to Gaza, following up on the arrest of the Christian charity’s Gaza director. Mohammad El Halabi is accused of diverting aid money to Hamas and goes on trial next month.
The issue is particularly relevant locally because World Vision Australia has been the biggest funder to the World Vision’s operations in the Palestinian territories since Mr Halabi became the charity’s Gaza head in 2010 . . .
According to internal documents provided to The Australian by World Vision, the charity spent $US37.37m in Gaza between 2007 and June 2016 — and $US2.62m on “shared” expenses between Gaza and the West Bank — supporting Mr Costello’s claims Mr Halabi could not have siphoned $US43m.
The documents further shed light on World Vision’s disbursements in the region. However, the detail remains very limited.
• Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, who in the 1970s was imprisoned by Israel for smuggling weapons to Palestinian terrorists — died in Rome on Sunday. Archbishop Capucci’s activities against Israel didn’t end when he left prison. More recently, he was one of the passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara when it was intercepted by Israeli commandos in 2010. The New York Times had the most complete obit.
• There goes the neighborhood: Jordan army chief warns ISIS fighters on Golan border have anti-aircraft missiles.
Around the World
• BDS, American style, per Haaretz:
The United States Department of the Treasury is reporting an increase in allegations that merchandise produced in West Bank Jewish settlements is being imported into the U.S. without the proper country of origin markings, in contradiction to U.S customs regulations.
Each year the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency receives between 800 and 1,000 complaints regarding the import of items from around the world into the country. Recently, the CBP confirmed, there has been a growing number of complaints about products ostensibly manufactured in the settlements but exported under a different label. The CBP declined to say whether it has contacted the Israeli exporters or begun any proceedings against them.
• Props to ACOM, the organization of Spanish Jews fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Spain. It scored another legal victory when a court over-ruled a pro-BDS resolution by the city of Santiago de Compostela. The Jerusalem Post explains:
Taking into account that a local council cannot make claims that would affect the foreign policy of Spain, the court further stressed that it could not understand how the resolution would improve or have an impact on the local community, and as such annulled the boycott decision.
This legal win is one of a string of recent successes by ACOM in combating the BDS movement in Spain, including reversing discriminatory decisions in Sant Adriá (Barcelona), Santa Eulalia (Ibiza) and now Santiago.
However, ACOM stressed that the battle is far from over, as this week alone the provincial government of Valencia, which represents some 2.5 million people, unanimously voted for a motion to discriminate against Israel.
• Venezuelan Jews are increasingly moving to Israel to escape their country’s economic crisis, food shortages and crime. But because the two countries have no diplomatic relations, the aliyah process is tricky. The Washington Post takes a closer look.
• Nazi imagery from Taiwan stems from ignorance, not hate, analysts say.
Commentary/Analysis
• Talking heads continue discussing John Kerry, Resolution 2334, and the peace process.
– Prof. Eugene Kontorovich: 5 ways Trump can negate Resolution 2334
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas’s Fatah and the no-state solution
– Raphael Ahren: Could the ‘Jewish State of Israel’ crack one of the conflict’s hardest nuts?
– Tim Montgomerie: Israeli settlements are not the real barrier to peace
– Nahum Barnea: Kerry’s failure, Netanyahu’s liberation
– Dr. Reuven Berko: Take, and demand more
– Omri Ceren: Kerry on Israel: An alternate universe
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Dr. Edy Cohen: Assad’s Palestinian mercenaries
– Julie Nathan: Anti-Semitism in Australia: Why does the malignancy persist?
Featured image: CC BY-SA Tom Woodward with additions by HonestReporting; Netanyahu CC BY IsraelinUSA; Bishop CC BY-SA Global Panorama; stork CC0 Pixabay; Santiago de Compostela CC BY-NC-ND Isidr Cea;
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