Today’s Top Stories
1. The four Jews killed in Friday’s Paris kosher market attack were laid to rest in Israel amid emotional eulogies and heavy media presence. None more so than President Rubi Rivlin’s according to YNet, who noted that Yohan Cohen, Phillipe Braham, Yoav Hattab, and Francois-Michel Saada were all in the process of moving to Israel or had recently visited.
“This is not how we wanted you to arrive in the Land of Israel, this is not how we wanted to see you come home, to the State of Israel, and to Jerusalem, its capital. We wanted you alive, we wanted for you, life,” Rivlin said at the beginning of his heartbreaking eulogy.
2. The good news: The UN General Assembly will address growing anti-Semitism on January 22. The bad news: It’s an informal meeting stemming from a request made months ago.
3. Following up on the recent Temple Mount tensions, Israel shut down three Muslim groups. Reuters explains:
The groups – Al Aqsa Champions, Muslim Women for Al Aqsa and Al Fajr Foundation for Culture and Literature – paid activists to use “verbal and even physical violence” against visitors to the Jerusalem shrine with the goal of “agitating and stirring up emotions,” the Shin Bet said.
4. Recommended Reading: West’s Anti-Israel Propaganda Encourages Terror: Media groupthink about Israel contributed to Paris terror. Ben-Dror Yemini explains how..
5. HonestReporting Radio: Ugly Journalism in Paris: While some journalists got the story right, others used the attacks to spew anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views. Click below to hear HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl interview with the Voice of Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The UK-based Muslim Charities Forum was stripped of its government funding over alleged links to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and British extremists. The MCF, which serves as an umbrella organization for Islamic aid groups, received £250,000 ($380,000) in state money. The Daily Telegraph‘s all over this story since it first uncovered the MCF’s terror ties last year.
• Haaretz: The Israeli economy still hasn’t recovered from Gaza war (but tourism figures are good).
• Bipartisan momentum grows for halt to U.S. funding of PA.
• A pair of Hamas members were convicted of planning to bomb a Jerusalem shopping mall they both worked at. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• Israelis, Palestinians, and Turks on Twitter collectively winced at Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bizarre photo-op with the visiting Mahmoud Abbas. See more photos of Abbas inspecting the awkward honor guard.
French Terror: The Aftershocks
• It’s not just France: Danish Jews ask for police protection after Paris attack.
• Defiant Charlie Hebdo puts Mohammed on its post-attack cover.
• One of Charlie Hebdo’s surviving cartoonists scoffed at the rapid and vapid international support for the magazine.
He told Dutch newspaper Volkskrant: ‘We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends,’ and added that most of the support has come from people who have ‘never seen Charlie Hebdo.’
‘It really makes me laugh,’ he added. ‘A few years ago, thousands of people took to the streets in Pakistan to demonstrate against Charlie Hebdo. They didn’t know what it was. Now it’s the opposite.’
• Ankara mayor: Mossad is behind Paris terror
• The BBC, New York Times, Associated Press, and Wall St. Journal (via Google News) look at French-Jewish attitudes towards aliyah. And the Daily Telegraph’s Robert Tait tweeted this insight from today’s funeral:
Commentary/Analysis
• Writing in the Boston Globe, Robert Leikind wonders if France will confront the anti-Semitism in its midst:
But the French people need to also recognize that anti-Semitism is a problem for all of France. The writers at Charlie Hebdo were killed because of what they drew and wrote. Jews are being attacked because they exist.
• Worth reading: Seth Frantzman‘s Four disturbing aspects of the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ media narrative.
• Look at the rogues gallery Salt Lake Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley lumps Israel with. For shame.
• Arab columnist Diana Moukalled raises an important point about the Muslim reaction to French terror:
Finding outright condemnation is difficult, because for many people, their condemnation of these crimes is often appended with an insidious and justificatory “but . . .” The fact is that twelve people were murdered in cold blood. And yet they are the ones condemned and criticized and cursed. And often this is followed by denials such as “But we are not the ones who killed them.” . . .
You won’t get anything out of those individual, and rather shy, voices that come out and try to absolve Islam of these crimes while also talking of the effects of colonialism and criticizing the West and its many freedoms that we clearly cannot stomach. There is no doubt the West has its responsibilities regarding this issue. But we too have ours, ones we have attempted to airbrush out of existence until we have fallen into this never-ending crucible of death.
Moukalled was channeling her inner Roger Cohen.
• Hate the NYPD? Blame Israel.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Yaakov Amidror (Europe must sober up), Moshe Arens (Like it or not, Israel is Europe’s outpost in war on the West), and Tariq Alhomayed (Hassan Nasrallah is no champion of free speech).
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Dominic Alves; candle CC BY-NC-SA flickr/only for him
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