Today’s Top Stories
1. ISIS fighters are massed in Syria and threatening to attack Lebanon, according to a Daily Telegraph dispatch from the border.
While Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Isil’s leader is not yet interested in seeking to takeover Lebanon, a source close to the jihadist group said, the group is plotting to target a string of Lebanese towns and villages on the country’s border that form a base of support for Hizbollah.
2. Retaliation? Not in my backyard! Lebanese officials hope Hezbollah’s payback to Israel comes from Syria, not from Lebanese soil. The Daily Star describes Beirut’s wishful thinking it can avoid being dragged into potential Israel-Hezbollah escalation:
“The Israeli raid took place in Syria, which requires that any response, should Hezbollah decide to respond, be carried out from Syria, not Lebanon, which is committed to resolution 1701,” Azzi, who is also the labor minister, told An-Nahar newspaper in comments published Tuesday.
“There is no need for Lebanon to shoulder the burden of what happened,” he cautioned.
Hmmmm. If Hezbollah retaliates from Syria, it will complicate things for Bashar Assad, who can’t relish the idea of overt IDF activity in Syria — and Israel will respond in Lebanon anyway. With ISIS a more immediate threat, I can’t imagine many Lebanese buying into more Hezbollah adventurism.
3. Budget-cutting, Ramallah style:
4. Daily Telegraph: Israel Still Occupying South Lebanon: Lebanon’s occupied by a silly selfie, not by Israel.
5. The Times Delineates a “Jewish Border.” HonestReporting prompts the Times of London to correct the record.
6. Noam Chomsky, Please Shut Up: The MIT professor sure enjoys the attention his extreme views bring.
7. HonestReporting Radio: Why is the NY Times Quoting Unnamed Al-Qaeda Members As Reliable Sources? Is there an ethical problem with quoting terrorists anonymously and treating them as credible sources? Click below to hear HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl interview with the Voice of Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Hamas reportedly building a new generation of rockets (and reconstructing its cross-border tunnels too).
• BBC‘s “Democracy Day” includes a narrow look at Palestinian democracy. I say narrow, because Yolanda Knell’s report implies that democracy is about elections, and nothing else — not the freedom of speech, assembly, worship, or media, all of which are limited in the PA and Gaza.
Still, I’m glad Knell acknowledged in her own vanilla way the under-reported problem of Mahmoud Abbas’s long-expired mandate to govern.
• Can we describe Hamas-Fatah fighting as tit-for-tat?
Gaza bomb hits car of Hamas security official
• Rear Admiral Dror Friedman briefed Globes on the Israeli Navy’s response to the threats Hezbollah poses.
• AP looks at the significance of the US lawsuit pitting victims of Palestinian terror against the PLO.
Commentary/Analysis
• Jeff Koterba, of the Omaha World-Herald, weighed in on the Miss Israel-Miss Lebanon selfie that has Lebanon up in arms and the rest of us scratching our heads.
• Shimon Shapira: The attack in the Golan exposes Iran’s growing presence along Israel’s borders.
• An escalation? It’s not only up to Hezbollah.
• Israel vs. Hezbollah, Spy vs. Spy
• Assessing the PA’s moves at the International Criminal Court, Pnina Sharvit Baruch describes the prosecutor’s decision to open a preliminary investigation as “a cause for concern, but not for panic.”
• BBC executive Danny Cohen on the rise of anti-Semitism: ‘Old abuse has found a new home on the internet’
• For more commentary/analysis, see Jonah Goldberg (Jews, outnumbered by Muslims, suffer under mob rule), Carlos Gurovich (Death of a prosecutor, death of justice), Bret Stephens (Packing time for France’s Jews, see Wall St. Journal via Google News), and David Conn (Just how antisemitic is Britain?).
Featured image: CC BY Javier Micora via flickr with cropping and additions by HonestReporting
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